Bodog Battles to Beat Lawsuit, Keep SERPs - It’s Far From Over
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Let’s do a quick recap before taking this into the final stretch. Ayres has been fighting what he sees as the theft of his domains by making sure in advance that his business name was trademarked (so he didn’t lose it when he lost the domains), getting the word out about the move, and getting the move and the redirects completed as quickly as possible. He made sure the new site would score high in the SERPs for his brand since he can’t control his ranking on the generic keywords – not immediately, at least; he gave the impression in his blog of having a team of SEOs working on it. And he took advantage of this potential disaster by expanding his brand and working toward repositioning his site to cover more than gambling – something he’s apparently been moving toward for years.
But it’s not over yet. Mid-October saw Bodog and 1st Technology back in court in Las Vegas. Bodog sought to overturn the default judgment, while 1st Technology filed for a permanent injunction to prevent Bodog from operating in the US and also to prevent them from redirecting traffic to BodogLife.com. Chief Judge Roger L. Hunt ruled against both of them. He let the default judgment stand and rejected Ayre’s argument that he never received notice of the lawsuit. Likewise, he ruled that 1st Technology “failed to adequately address the four-prong test that would satisfy the burden to obtain a permanent injunction.”
Ayres, meanwhile, has raised the rhetoric. NewBodog.com displays a mocking tabloid-like page with a “story” dated October 11, 2007 that describes 1st Technology’s lawyers as “the same law firm that has made a business out of taking nearly discarded patents, stretching them thinner than a slice of deli meat and using legal threats in an effort to extort money from large companies.” It further describes the lead lawyer, Raymond Niro, as “nothing but an evil patent troll with stinky sausage breath.”
It’s hard to say how this will end; many expect the case to set a precedent, and some think that if 1st Technology wins the case, it could have repercussions in the online music industry as well. But Ayres has shown that the way out of a situation like this is to move forward, not backward – and this lawsuit should serve as a warning to show how easily one can lose one’s domain.
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