Bodog Patent Infringement Case Could Set New PrecedentBodog Fight and Bodog Beat sites not affected by patent infringement judgment.
A Washington State judge has order the registrar for Bodog.com to have the site removed due to an obscure "patent infringement" that could cause problems for other companies, specifically those in the music industry.
On Aug 1, 2007 a judge for the Superior Court of Kings County in Seattle, Washington handed down a foreign judgement in the amount of
$ 48,937,456.00 in the case of 1ST TECHNOLOGY LLC VS BODOG ENT GROUP S.A.
It is not known if Bodog, an international company operating exclusively out of the United States, was aware of the landmark decision handed down. Bodog was cited for failing to appear in court, however, few if any online gambling operators are willing to step on US soil following aggressive legislation and law enforcement actions against colleagues.
Most of the Bodog-related domains have been pulled. The company's new website domain (at least for the time being) will be www.newbodog.com. Calvin Ayre, founder of Bodog, has always insisted that his company's name is trademarked, one of the few online gambling ventures to do so.
1st Technology LLC is a leading technology licensing company with a patent portfolio of advanced Internet and multimedia innovations. 1st Technology is headed by Internet pioneer Dr. Scott Lewis who led the development of the world's first single integrated circuit chip with on-board video and audio compression, advanced adaptive digital signal processing technology at Oxford University, and introduced multiple broadband Internet and multimedia technologies. 1st Technology has a long list of industry leaders as licensees.
The violation relates to the Method for the production and transmission of enhanced multimedia information.
An optimization method is disclosed that enhances the interactivity of multimedia information. The optimization method includes separating a multimedia information into primary and secondary layers and enhancing that information in the primary layers such that the perceived psychographic information quality is improved. This method has the advantage of providing compression and/or transmission algorithms to maximize enhancement of the multimedia information.
"We are fighting this dispute and are confident that we will win," says Ayre. "I sincerely apologize to any customers affected by our interruption."
However, the online gaming giant continues to offer customers full service despite the domain dispute, with Bodog staff working through the night to get the alternative site up and running.
"Nearly all aspects of the website have been updated to reflect the environment our clients are accustomed to," says Ayre. "We are working to resolve any of the minor remaining glitches on the alternate site, but other that it is business as usual."
Untold monetary damage will most certainly result from Bodog's drastic loss of search engine optimization. For example: type in the search term "football betting" and while Bodog appears among the top 5 in Google, its link is now dead.
While the CalvinAyre.com blog is also dead, the Bodog Beat remains active. For Bodog, the action against it could not have come at a worst possible time. Traditionally, the first two to three weeks of football are the busiest of the year for online betting shops catering to the North American market place.
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com
Originally published August 28, 2007 6:58 pm ET
