Imagine spending tens (or hundreds) of millions branding your company name all over the world, only to have a judge take it away from you while you slept. Well, that's what happenned to Calvin Ayre and our friends at Bodog this week.
Earlier this month the mega-gambling/entertainment company was on the losing side of a patent infringement lawsuit filed by 1st Technology LLC. Yesterday, a Washington judge ordered an Internet registrar to strip Bodog of their domain names. Attempted visits to Bodog.com come up with a page not found error.
You may have noticed I said that the company lost the name while they slept. Well, I meant that. Calvin et al kept to their year long hiatus from U.S. soil and failed to appear to answer the suit. A summary judgement is often awarded when the defendants do not show up and this was no exception.
The company has launched a new site, appropriately called NewBodog.com, and released the following statement...
We are currently experiencing difficulties with the Bodog.com DNS registration and I wanted to let you know that until the issue is resolved we are directing all our players to www.newbodog.com, with little or no interruption to Bodog services.
Bottom line: you can play at Bodog right now. Everything you see will be the same as what you are used to and we'll resolve any minor glitches shortly.
The problem is the direct result of a dispute over the ownership of the Bodog.com domain name. We are fighting this dispute and are confident that we will win. In the meantime, other than the change in URL, it is business as usual.
I don't want anything to interrupt your enjoyment of Bodog properties so please continue to play hard.
Regards,
Calvin Ayre
Other company websites were also effected including Bodogbeat.com, BodogFights.com, and even CalvinAyre.com.
