With the US Justice Department aggressively seizing domain addresses of companies alleged to be involved in patent infringement, Zynga better be careful.
While we are being a little tongue-in-cheek, the world’s largest free Internet poker game is accused of violating two patents owned by Agincourt Gaming.
That company is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a permanent injunction against Zynga according to the Wednesday filing presented in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
Agincourt, which focuses on the social-gaming space, said it "owns foundational patents that claim priority back to 1996 and cover the processes for credits-based online gaming and a prize redemption system based on the outcome of game play."
Patent lawsuits are nothing new to the world of online poker. In 2007, Bodog.com lost its domain name over a period of several months , the result of a patent dispute involving a "method and system for interactively transmitting multimedia information over a network which requires a reduced bandwidth”.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com