Online gambling casino Bodog’s recent struggle holds lessons for SEOs. When 1st Technology slapped the Antigua-based company with a patent infringement lawsuit, it sparked a fight that is still going on. And it forced Bodog to answer the question: what do you do when you lose your domain?
The answer isn’t simple. Before we get to that, however, let’s take a look at the case. The plaintiff, based in Las Vegas, filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Nevada against Bodog, alleging patent infringement. On June 14, the judge awarded 1st Technology damages in the amount of $48,937,456.00. There are a number of reasons for Bodog not showing up; company CEO Calvin Ayres claims they were never served properly, while observers of the case point to the U.S. Justice Department’s crackdown on online gambling as the reason Bodog representatives stayed away.
After Bodog failed to appear, the venue was switched to the state of Washington. On August 1, a judge for the Superior Court of Kings County in Seattle, Washington, supported the damages and ruled that Bodog must surrender all of its domains to 1st Technology. That leaves 1st Technology with the options of either liquidating or monetizing the domains.
Note that 1st Technology is in the business of technology licensing. The head of the company, Dr. Scott Lewis, is credited with leading the development of the first single integrated computer chip with on-board video and audio compression. He is also said to have introduced multiple broadband Internet and multimedia technologies. A quick search of federal district court filings and dockets shows that 1st Technology is involved as a plaintiff in at least five other patent infringement cases at this time, and at least one of these is with another gambling site.
The disputed patent was filed by Mel Molnick with the U.S. Patent Office in 1995 and published in 1998. (As an interesting side note, Calvin Ayres has been building his company for about 10 years now, so he started not long before the patent was published). It is for a method for the production and transmission of enhanced multimedia information. This software is downloaded by Bodog’s customers to assist their gaming activities. At this point, however, it looked like it would be “game over” for Bodog and its customers.
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