Bodog's Domain Names Confiscated

[jetset]

@ Paddy.

I posted that link because it was relevant to your allegations against Ayre and Bodog and represents an alternative perspective, which imo is rarely a bad thing, especially when emotions are running high and personal attacks of this intensity are being launched.

As I wrote in my post, I think it would have been more interesting and informative had the ad hominem attacks been kept to a minimum and the facts of the 1st Technologies case examined in more detail. In this latter respect I think your post did the better job, although the enmity toward Ayre was distracting.

You should not make the mistake of assuming that everyone is agin' you simply because they prefer to look at both sides of a coin when they have limited personal knowledge of an issue or bias.

I hope that these companies will themselves publish statements on their positions, and I will certainly be following developments in the case as they unfold. In that regard I think the 1st Technologies lawyers you quote in support of your article are remiss in not making a public statement - but perhaps the personal content discourages that.

I don't think personal attacks on webmasters of sites like Major Wager, SBR and Point-Spreads should cloud the issue, either. If you feel you have a libel case against these webmasters then by all means pursue it, but indulging in personal insults and discrediting them as Ayre "flunkies" simply makes it appear that you are hitting out at anyone who does not get on board with your view of Bodog and the current difficulties in which it finds itself.

@ lots0

Thanks for your comments on the search engine developments of this issue, which seem to confirm one of the consequences predicted by Paddy.

[Paddy]

This is a cut and paste from another forum, or forums, I guess. It raises some very interesting industry issues about whether the US government can do what 1st Technology does as a means of enforcing the criminal law.

Very insightful read from Bill's Poker Blog.Bodog / NewBodog Is Just The Beginning

August 30, 2007 @ 7:22 am · Filed under Poker, Poker News, Online Poker, Is Online Poker Legal?

"I may do a more in-depth post at some point in the future but I think the thing many people are missing in all this Bodog/NewBodog mess is that this is an interesting legal tactic that will likely be used again in the future. 1st Technology LLC sued to have Bodog’s domain names rendered useless. Many people have speculated that is because they used a US based registrar. I’m guessing that those people are wrong.

It doesn’t matter if Bodog used ENOM, GoDaddy or some Costa Rican based registrar because the people who handle domain name disputes are the folks at ICANN. It’s not even a .com thing since ICANN basically has some sort of control over every top level domain (TLD) in use on the internet.

ICANN is a difficult to describe entity since they are technically a non-profit corporation but they act on behalf of the US government to handle tasks previously performed by the federal government. They basically renew their contract with the US Dept. of Commerce for the rights to manage the world’s internet traffic.

Now, if the implications of this haven’t started to settle in let me draw up a scenario for you. Louisiana sues XYZPoker.com for $100 million in unpaid tax revenue. XYZPoker.com who is located in some gambling friendly jurisdiction either refuses to submit itself to the court or tries to defend itself and loses. Either they cough up the $100 million or Louisiana can go to ICANN and demand that they turn off all domains owned by XYZPoker.com as a form of payment and to prevent any further violation of tax laws.

How about this; US DOJ points a finger at UB and says that they are in violation of the UIGEA and files against them. They convict UB of violations of the UIGEA and get a court order for ICANN to turn off all known UB owned domains.

Starting to see the picture"
Once again, that's quite a tailspin!

[Paddy]

@ Paddy.

I posted that link because it was relevant to your allegations against Ayre and Bodog and represents an alternative perspective, which imo is rarely a bad thing, especially when emotions are running high and personal attacks of this intensity are being launched.

As I wrote in my post, I think it would have been more interesting and informative had the ad hominem attacks been kept to a minimum and the facts of the 1st Technologies case examined in more detail. In this latter respect I think your post did the better job, although the enmity toward Ayre was distracting.

How was it relevant? I did not post allegations against Calvin. I posted an analysis of the 1stTechnology lawsuit which consisted primarily of factual accounts of the contents of the court documents. The point spreads article did not present an alternative perspective about anything to do with 1st Technology. It is a libellous smear against me designed to discredit anything I might say against Calvin. I don't think anyone would agree that a libeller hiding behind a website in the ether presents an alternative perspective worth considering. I put my name to what I say. If you want to sue me, I'm not hard to find. I've been trying for months to find this Thomas Jensen.

Calvin is Bodog. If online gamblers are liable to lose their money because of some flaw in Calvin's character, it is difficult to convey that without it being characterized as an ad hominem attack.

I don't think everyone is agin me, including you. I'm pretty well aware that a lot of people have found this information and other material about Calvin useful. I don't see all of this in terms of who is agin me and who is for me. I put up information and people learn from it. Other people put up other information and I learn from it.

Hardly anyone has their money in Bodog anymore. That can hardly be a bad thing.

[Mousey]

.....

"The violation relates to the Method for the production and transmission of enhanced multimedia information.

"An optimization method is disclosed that enhances the interactivity of multimedia information. The optimization method includes separating a multimedia information into primary and secondary layers and enhancing that information in the primary layers such that the perceived psychographic information quality is improved. This method has the advantage of providing compression and/or transmission algorithms to maximize enhancement of the multimedia information."

.....

Pardon me while I briefly interrupt the 'he said, she said' flow....

I am more concerned with the actual violation. To be honest, I read the above and understand little of what it's talking about. However, I do have questions.

Is this 'software' or 'application' used by all online casinos? Only RTG? Only BoDog?

Do all casinos have to pay for the rights to use it?

And if it's a software and/or application directly necessary to day to day operation of casinos, why is this fee not paid by the software companies (RTG, MG, etc.?).

Why was Bodog singled out? They're the only casino that hasn't paid up? (Like most here, I highly suspect that the Feds 'convinced' 1st Technologies to pursue this lawsuit.)

And why was their domain name(s) confiscated? What has one to do with the other?

[lojo]

Never mind... it was another company who had been sued by 1st

On August 10, 2004 the Company received a complaint for patent infringement that
was filed on July 20, 2004 in the US District Court of Nevada by 1stTechnology
LLC of California ("1st Technology"). Named as Defendants to the subject
complaint are the Company, Real Time Gaming and Terra Networks, S.A.
(collectively referred to as the "Defendants"). 1stTechnology has claimed that
the Defendants have each infringed the Lewis Multimedia Patents. 1st Technology
has requested a trial by jury and is seeking damages, attorney's fees and costs,
and a permanent injunction prohibiting further infringement of the Lewis
Multimedia Patents. The Company is of the opinion that this claim is of no
merit and, the Company intends to defend this action.
CITE

Will be more thurough before jumping in again

[Paddy]

Pardon me while I briefly interrupt the 'he said, she said' flow....

I am more concerned with the actual violation. To be honest, I read the above and understand little of what it's talking about. However, I do have questions.

Is this 'software' or 'application' used by all online casinos? Only RTG? Only BoDog?

Do all casinos have to pay for the rights to use it?

And if it's a software and/or application directly necessary to day to day operation of casinos, why is this fee not paid by the software companies (RTG, MG, etc.?).

Why was Bodog singled out? They're the only casino that hasn't paid up? (Like most here, I highly suspect that the Feds 'convinced' 1st Technologies to pursue this lawsuit.)

And why was their domain name(s) confiscated? What has one to do with the other?

Never mind the interruption. I'm tired of it myself.

Those are some good questions.

As best I can tell, this patent must be about some software code and things like compression algorithms. There is a huge amount of bytes sent back and forth between a gaming site and the customer during games. These take up lot of bandwidth and I think this is especially a problem with dial up networks.

The allegation against Bodog seems to be that Bodog has incorporated this code into what Calvin says is "proprietary" software, that is, Bodog designed it themselves and didn't buy it from somebody else. To sum it up, incorporating this code into Bodog software would make it work faster, which is necessary for online gaming.

1st Technology says that Bodog uses some of its code in Bodog's code. I assume Bodog denies that, or perhaps they may be saying they don't give a shit because nobody can touch them with US law. The truth is that nobody knows if Bodog denies that they incorporate Lewis design in their software. But if it comes to a Calvin says, Lewis says, I think I'd be much more inclined to take the word of a Marshall scholar, an Oxford Phd, and a Harvard MBA than I would of a guy banned from public stock markets for 20 years. But maybe that's just me.

Its a very good question about RTG, which I have now learned means Real Time Gaming. Perhaps RTG has its own design that does the same thing as 1st Tech's, but uses different code to the extent that it doesn't infringe the patent. Maybe RTG has another patent and they don't need to pay royalties to 1st Tech for theirs. If that is the case, all sites that use RTG and pay royalties to them are unlikely to be affected by this recent thing.

I think that if RTG infringed 1st Tech's patent, we'd have heard about long ago. On the other hand, maybe RTG incorporates 1st Tech's stuff and pays royalties, which then allow all of its customers to use it.

I think Bodog was singled out because they claim proprietary software that really isn't proprietary at all. That, and Calvin's mouth and the mistaken impression that there's a lot of money there to be sued for.

As to the domain name confiscation, I do know the answer to that. 1st Tech's position throughout is that Bodog is a criminal organization that scoffs at US law. It also says that Bodog is causing it great harm by using its software and affecting the market share of its own licensees who do pay it royalties and thus is doing great harm to 1st Tech. It has sought an injunction to stop the infringing behavior. Normally an injunction will only issue when a payment of cash will not account for the damages when the suit is eventually settled. 1st Tech maintains that a cash payment is not going to be paid, the damage is immediate and ongoing, and the only thing to be done is stop the downloading of the infringing software by tactics such as interfering with the domain name. That, in a nutshell, is why the Washington court would have given that order against the Washington State domain registrar.

Other orders may be coming in other states, or may already have been given. For instance, such orders may have been responsible for Sherdog forum stopping Bodog advertising, or ION television cancelling the Bodog fight contract.

[Paddy]

Never mind... it was another company who had been sued by 1st

On August 10, 2004 the Company received a complaint for patent infringement that
was filed on July 20, 2004 in the US District Court of Nevada by 1stTechnology
LLC of California ("1st Technology"). Named as Defendants to the subject
complaint are the Company, Real Time Gaming and Terra Networks, S.A.
(collectively referred to as the "Defendants"). 1stTechnology has claimed that
the Defendants have each infringed the Lewis Multimedia Patents. 1st Technology
has requested a trial by jury and is seeking damages, attorney's fees and costs,
and a permanent injunction prohibiting further infringement of the Lewis
Multimedia Patents. The Company is of the opinion that this claim is of no
merit and, the Company intends to defend this action.
CITE

Will be more thurough before jumping in again

Wow, that's very interesting and answers the question I tried to answer or above now I guess it is. So 1st Technology is saying that even RTG software incorporates their software?

Good work, Lojo.

[Mousey]

Never mind... it was another company who had been sued by 1st

On August 10, 2004 the Company received a complaint for patent infringement that
was filed on July 20, 2004 in the US District Court of Nevada by 1stTechnology
LLC of California ("1st Technology"). Named as Defendants to the subject
complaint are the Company, Real Time Gaming and Terra Networks, S.A.
(collectively referred to as the "Defendants"). 1stTechnology has claimed that
the Defendants have each infringed the Lewis Multimedia Patents. 1st Technology
has requested a trial by jury and is seeking damages, attorney's fees and costs,
and a permanent injunction prohibiting further infringement of the Lewis
Multimedia Patents. The Company is of the opinion that this claim is of no
merit and, the Company intends to defend this action.
CITE

Will be more thurough before jumping in again

Thank you for that info, Lojo. Very, very interesting. I'll try to wade through some more of the legal stuff (unfortunately my eyes usually glaze over before I can get the gist of what I'm reading). If RTG is incorporating this spiffy coding/application/software (whatever it is) then, why aren't all the RTG's being shut down by 'turning off' their domains? How can one casino be singled out? And if RTG has started paying up... why bother Bodog? (yes, yes, I know why -- I guess I mean how can they legally target only one casino?)

Found this about Playtech & 1st Tech...

Playtech (Cyprus) Ltd., the international designer, developer and licensor of software for the gambling industry, a subsidiary company of Playtech Ltd, listed on AIM, announced today the signing of a license agreement with 1st Technology LLC.

The license agreement is in relation to 1st Technology’s core multimedia patents applied to advanced online gaming products. The patents, developed by multimedia pioneer Dr. Scott Lewis, CEO of 1st Technology, are targeted at providing enhanced interactivity and optimized delivery of high quality multimedia information over networks of various bandwidths including narrowband and broadband telephone, cable, and wireless Internet.

Dr. Lewis, commenting on the agreement, said: “We are delighted that industry leader Playtech is now a licensee. Our new relationship will allow us to develop superior gaming products to the market using 1st Technology’s internationally recognized patent portfolio.”

[Mousey]

Nevermind... I got side tracked... too much Googling...

Just a sort of side note... this 1st Technology is a royal pain in the butt... do they have a patent on all graphics/video distribution methods?

NDS, Orbis, 1st Technology Settle Lawsuit
On October 10, 2005, NDS Group PLC ("NDS"), Orbis Technology and 1st Technology LLC agreed to settle a patent infringement suit that had been brought against NDS and Orbis by 1st Technology in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. NDS agreed to license the patents in suit and 1st Technology agreed to dismiss with prejudice all claims against NDS and Orbis. The payment to 1st Technology is not material to NDS.

NDS Group plc, a majority owned subsidiary of News Corporation, is a leading supplier of open end-to-end digital pay TV solutions for the secure delivery of entertainment and information to television set-top boxes and IP devices.

[jetset]

1st Technologies patents have been respected and licensed by a number of major online gambling software companies, including Orbis, Playtech, Cryptologic and others. This has been announced by press releases in the past by those companies, as you have already discovered and was noted in our early reports on this issue (see Casinomeister News), having been quickly revealed by Googling.

That suggests to me that the 1st Technologies patent has wide application, and that the current issue is not a case of RTG (or Bodog's "tweaked" version of RTG software) being a target in isolation.

I would think that Bodog is, however, a vulnerable and high profile target well suited to getting the message out that these patents are strong enough to stand and will be enforced.

Bodog probably has more to lose (and to pay) in this game than RTG itself, given the relative commercial standing of the two companies, especially since RTG's alleged mysterious sale and move to Costa Rica.