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Bodog Founder, Calvin Ayre, insists his company was not properly served when a complainant - 1st Technology - filed a "patent infringement" lawsuit that ultimately resulted in the loss of a coveted domain name, Bodog.com. That URL remains parked in that great Purgatory of Web space called "Error, We Can't Find The Webpage You're Looking For". Neither party can utilize the domain name. In a written brief appearing on Ayre's Web blog, the billionaire online gambling magnate insists The Costa Rican company in that [patent dispute] action is not Bodog and never ever was Antiguan based Bodog. "The company is now named Data Entry and Domain Management SA ("Domain Management"). We let "Domain Management" use our name in the past to make it easier for them to work for us as a domain manager. (We still use third party domain managers, but now we no longer allow them to use Bodog in their name to ensure that this never happens again.) This was, unfortunately, bad advice from someone on our team and of negligible current importance to us as we will never go back to the old domains now that the new ones are again rising in keywords for organic search." Ayre reiterated this to Gambling911.com. "Get your facts straight!" he lashed out at Gambling911. "We are also confident that the Courts in Washington will agree with us that the domains should never have been allowed to be hijacked in the first place, but that issue will have no affect on us and the company they have in court will likely soon be allowed to die no matter what the domain outcome is." Scott Lewis, proprietor of 1st Technology, refutes Ayre's claims. "The argument over whether Bodog Entertainment Group S.A. along with Bodog.com and Bodog.net, etc., are really the same as the online gaming company that downloads and makes millions of dollars a year is, in fact, a dead dog," he said. "This was put forward by the Defendants and summarily rejected by the judge in Federal Court on October 11, 2007; the judge upheld that our service on the Judgment Debtors for patent infringement was legally binding despite the various corporate entity arguments.
"(Per the minutes)
The Court, in
essence, is not
going to permit some
sort of corporation
shell game to be
used to avoid
service "So, regardless of what name(s) they change the Judgment Debtor entities to, the legal situation remains that they have been found liable for a $49M judgment and we, the Judgment Creditor are entitled to pursue discovery using subpoenas and other means to unravel the 'corporate shell game'." The war of words continued to escalate between the two parties in a heated exchange by week's end. "If Calvin, as he implies in your latest (Gambling911.com) article, is so sure that Bodog Entertainment Group S.A., Bodog.com, and Bodog.net, the Judgment Debtors, are dead entities and never related to online gaming, as put forward in court papers - why do the Judgment Debtors refuse to respond to our legal requests for documents, and interrogatories on Bodog Entertainment Group S.A.?" Lewis asked. "In fact why don't they put on their website all the corporate documents so we all can see them? I challenge them to do this and put up or shut up. This would help save many of the advertisers and affiliates the trouble of responding to the subpoenas." Ayre lashed out on his blog:
But the "war" has spilled beyond just the words spewed by Ayre and Lewis. Last week, Gambling911.com reported that a number of advertising venues for Bodog had been subpoenaed by 1st Technology. We asked Lewis the rationale behind the subpoenas. "The U.S. Federal Court system gives broad powers for Judgment Creditors (1st Tech) to discover documents and corporate relationships that may lead to assets of the Judgment Debtors and also to determine the extent of damages (e.g. U.S. downloads, e.g. U.S. customers). One of the best sources for this evidence is the U.S. advertisers and affiliates who enable and get compensated based upon the infringing U.S. downloads to U.S. customers and other related entities." Ayre sees things differently. "No amount of digging through subpoenas on the part of the patent trolls is going to make the wrong company the right company or put assets into a company that was asset-less since before the litigation started. My advice to anyone getting one of these is to just say you have never worked for Bodog.com (you cannot work for a domain), or the company they mention in the documents and then just throw the thing in the garbage and treat the Trolls with the respect they deserve, ignore them entirely." Great advise if you are living outside the United States and plan on never returning. If you fail, without adequate cause, to obey a subpoena, you may be found to be in contempt of court. The punishment for contempt may include imprisonment or other sanctions. Lewis offered one means of settling the matter (outside of Ayre's previous challenge inside a boxing ring). "The Judgment Debtors are appealing the case -- fine, that is their right," said Lewis. "But they haven't filed a motion for a stay in the collection activities of the Judgment Creditor -- this would stop most of our activities. Why? Well, because they would then have to post a $49M bond with the court. If they are so sure that they are in the right and will win the appeal, why don't they just post the $49M bond --- if they do this I will stop our judgment collection activities and most of the subpoenas and it will save a lot of effort for advertisers and affiliates. In fact, assuming they can raise the money, I challenge them to post the bond." That seems highly unlikely, though some type of settlement behind closed doors does not. The industry itself is observing this matter closely, analyzing both sides of the argument. "He (Ayre) may have a strong case but he needs to stop turning this into a three ring circus by antagonizing the guy (Lewis) on his blog," said one industry analyst who did not wish to have his name mentioned. "He (Calvin) comes across as being bitter, and quite frankly billionaires have no reason to be bitter. This is something that needs to be handled by attorneys in private, not on some personal CEO blog that links to stale three day old second hand news from irrelevant Danish gambling news portals that wouldn't know an original story if it hit them over the head." ---- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher CCostigan@CostiganMedia.com Originally published February 22, 2008 11:16 am EST
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Bodog
Patent Dispute Case:
"Court Will Not
Allow Some Sort of
Corporation Shell
Game"
"Based on what
investigators have
uncovered on tax
cheat and debt
defaulter Scott
Lewis, it's been
proven that Lewis
has never invented
anything in his life
and does not use any
patents [that he and
his lawyer bosses
control] to deliver
any products or
services. Their
business model
exists exclusively
to litigate
settlements from
real companies. And
that is the
definition of a
Patent Troll."