It has been almost seven weeks since Bodog has lost control of its domain names and since has gone from newbodog to its current home as bodoglife. Finally the legal team for Bodog Entertainment Group, S.A. had its day in court versus 1st Technology.
In the hearing held in Las Vegas, the Bodog team claimed a small victory when the U.S. District Judge denied a request by 1st Technology for a permanent injunction to halt Bodog business in the U.S. as well as denied the request to stop all the redirection to the domain bodoglife.com. The court wrote that 1st Technology “failed to satisfy the requirements for permanent injunctive relief and in the Court’s view, is requesting relief beyond this Court’s power to grant.”
In his blog, Calvin Ayre had this to say,
“Look, the bottom line is this: The Costa Rican company they sued, Bodog Entertainment Group, S.A., does not itself provide online services nor did it ever operate or own any websites. It’s not even directly part of the Bodog Group of Companies, as it was structured as a third party service provider, and it was shut down operationally a year ago (end of September 2006). It merely provided some call center data entry and domain management services for various entities that use the Bodog name or provide online entertainment services for Bodog. It was our intention to get the various Bodog domain names back from this company and we were in the process of this when they were hijacked.”
“A company has to be running websites to even potentially infringe a patent that 1st Technology claims to cover websites. Though 1st Technology and its lawyer bosses are classic patent trolls, this has never been a patent case; it has always just been a legal system “stick up” where the objective was always to grab the domain names and try to force a monetary settlement, the legal equivalent of a back alley mugging. Bad luck for them that they tried to mug Bodog. We won the war immediately when we moved to BodogLife.com so effortlessly and we will always be BodogLife.com going forward, but we do want to protect the various Bodog trademarks by getting back control of some of the heisted domain names.”
All did not go perfectly though has the motion to set aside the $49 million judgment was denied by the judge. Bodog plans to appeal the denial. Mr. Ayre stated, “We regret that the judge in this case decided not to let us open these legal issues, so in addition to the inevitable appeal, we are also intending to open up new legal fronts to ensure that this important issue is given proper judicial review in the U.S.. This is the first time of which we are aware that a non-U.S. company, with zero operations or assets in the U.S. has had its domain names seized with no prior notice simply because it was using a U.S-based domain name registrar. We do not believe that domain names should be allowed to be defined as assets to be seized for purposes of collecting on a judgment.”
You can read more about the legal paperwork involved at www.calvinayrelife.com.
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