More Trademark Infringements

April 22, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

0 Comments The competition in the big wide world web is very great, which sometimes causes companies to use somewhat underhanded methods to direct business in their direction. There are many trademark infringements on the Internet, only some of which end up in court.

Recently, the gambling world has had a new trademark infringement case come to light. Often, companies that are suing when their trademarks have been infringed are simply content to solve the problem and not to charge or collect heavy fines.

In Panama, an online gambling operator has been accused of trademark infringement. It seems that this is not the first time that they have been accused of trademark infringement, and in fact, they are now facing a lawsuit for the second time. In the past, this Internet casino operator had lost the case brought against them by MGM Mirage. This time, they have been accused of using brands from the land-based Station Casino for its Internet domain names.

The company in Panama being sued is Smart Answer, with the specific court action against Susana Gonzales who is connected with the Panamanian company. The first trademark infringement suit against them was by MGM Mirage Operations which was filed on 7 November 2008. This lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in March 2009.

The second suit was filed by Bellagio LLC on 13 November 2008. The court ruled in Bellagio LLC's favor and brought a judgement of $2.2 million for the disputed trademarks of Mandalay Baby, Treasure Island, Circus Circus and New York-New York which are all owned by Bellagio. In the end, the fine was not pursued for collection, but Bellagio seemed to be content with the domain names being confiscated.

The most recent case which was filed last week on 17 April 2009 has again been brought by the MGM Mirage group against Smart Answer and Susana Gonzales. This time, the claimed trademark infringements are for land-based casino's Station trademark. The domains being complained about are Sunset Station, Boulder Station and Palace Station. The websites linked to these domains all point to one online gambling site - Golden Casino.

The lawsuit states that the actions taken by the defendants are in place in order "to disrupt plaintiff's business by, among other things, diverting web users away from plaintiff's websites and to the online gambling website defendants linked to the infringing domain names." Simply stated, a user may think they are going into a website for the specific land-based casino, and will be redirected to an online casino which is not connected to the land-based casino in any way.

One does have to wonder if Smart Answer is perhaps not the best name for a company that has managed to get sued three times for trademark infringements!

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