Wagerlogic and Marvel Dispute

April 19, 2010 | News Category: Gaming Law

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Wagerlogic, a subsidiary of Cryptologic, has had a dispute regarding their licensing agreement with Marvel Enterprises Inc. and Marvel Enterprises B.V. Cryptologic issued a press release on April 16th regarding this issue.

The press release, "Notification of Arbitration Proceedings" did not give too many details regarding the reason for the dispute. It mostly stated that the online gaming software company is planning to proceed with arbitration proceedings because they were unable to resolve their issues with Marvel at this time.

The press release did not offer very much information as to why the dispute has taken place. The first part of the press release read as follows: "Cryptolgic Limited, a global developer of branded online betting games and Internet casino software, announces that arbitration proceedings have been formally commenced by Wagerlogic Ltd. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Cryptolgic Limited) against Marvel Enterprises Inc. and Marvel Enterprises B.V. (collectively "Marvel"), under the JAMS Comprehensive Rules in New York City, USA."

Wagerlogic claims that Marvel has not been holding to certain parts of their agreement. The press release noted that "Marvel has committed material breaches of certain provisions of its agreement with Wagerlogic Ltd." It seems that the dispute is over certain licensing issues regarding Marvel's comic book characters.

Very little information was released to the public regarding the issues involved. Cryptologic and Marvel first signed an agreement in 2005. In the first three years of their agreement, 17 popular online slot games were released to online casinos using Wagerlogic's online casino software. Over the years, more and more Marvel comic book characters have been added to Wagerlogic's repertoire of slots. 2009 saw an extension of the licensing agreement with new comic characters to add to the already exciting list. The licensing agreement has currently been extended to 2013.

Recently, Cryptologic has signed licensing agreements with online gambling licensees, in which the online gambling sites use Cryptologic slots for their players, usually as side games, and Cryptologic receives a percentage of the revenue made from those games. Many of the online casino slot games that have been offered in this way are those that make use of the Marvel Comics characters.

At this stage, details of the dispute remain to be seen, and fans of both Cryptologic software and Marvel Comics characters can only hope that it will be easily dealt with and will not affect the future cooperation of the two companies.

Online casino players can enjoy slots with X-Men, Spiderman, Elektra, The Incredible Hulk, and others at their favorite Cryptologic online casinos, such as InterCasino.