Online Gambling Giant Bodog Loses its Domain Name - 08-28-07

August 29 - Wow. I don't even know where to start with this story. Players got hit by the UIGEA last year, outlawing gambling in the USA. While it has become troublesome to gamble online, largely due to funds transfer issues, Bodog players woke up this week to find that the sportsbook, casino and poker room websites were gone. Timeout. Error 400, nothing. Just a white screen with some techno babble on it..

Initial rumors were that some tech rogue pulled a fast one and somehow took ownership of the bodog.com domain, taking down the website.

Bodog responded later on Tuesday, moving all of the sites to the "newbodog.com" domain, and first issuing a statement that there was a DNS issue, but quickly following it up with one that stated that the company was in dispute with another party which involved the bodog.com URL, but that they were confident that it would be resolved soon.

Then the real story started to surface. It has come to light that what really happened was that the domain name was lost due to a $48.6-million default judgment obtained by a Las Vegas company against Bodog in a patent infringement case. I actually though this was a prank until I read it from more than one reliable source.

To cut a long story short,  a company called 1st Technology LLC of Las Vegas, Nevada, managed to obtain a default judgment against Bodog. The claimed that Bodog failed to answer allegations that downloaded software used by its customers to gamble online infringed upon 1st Technology's patents. Hang on. Stop. Someone owns a patent on placing a remote bet and managed to successfully prosecute? This adds new meaning to the saying that "anything is possible in Vegas".

The Las Vegas company obtained the judgment after the Bodog companies failed to answer allegations. Filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada. Following the recent arrests of online gambling executives in the US it is no surprise that nobody traveled to the US to dispute the allegations. The DOJ has made it clear that the yare cracking down, so it's no surprise.

1st Technology lawyer Kristopher Rath as quoted saying: "The Bodog entities infringing activities are responsible for over $65 billion in cumulative transactions to date, with approximately two-thirds of this revenue currently being derived from infringing United States activities." and "....despite reaping the rewards of U.S. commerce, the Bodog entities evade United States law and courts, and Mr. Ayre gloats about his companies' ability to operate above American law."

But it gets even more melodramatic when he says this that his client "continues to suffer massive and irreparable harm because of the Bodog entities' wrongful conduct", and the "only way to stop this harm is to enjoin Bodog's United States activities."

Now one can understand someone registering a patent to protect their business and the intellectual property of that business, But if you aren't even competing in that business should you have that right?

Surely, this is capitalism gone disastrously wrong. We'll track this story and keep you posted.

PS. One can only imagine the impact that the lost search engine traffic must be having on Bodog's business as they have enjoyed great results for most gambling search terms.

You can still find all of Bodog's great services and all their great services are accessible on the new URL.

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