DEVALUED DOMAINS AT ONLINE GAMBLING GROUP

23 November 2007

Bodog owner claims confiscated domains have lost value


The owner of the Bodog online gambling group fired another broadside at patent litigation opponent First Technologies this week on his blog Calvin Ayre Life.com, taunting 1st Tech's CEO Dr. Scott Lewis on an alleged decline in the Bodog domains he holds by court order.

The two companies are still locked in litigation over 1st Technologies claim that Bodog infringed patents on Internet technology, which led to Nevada and Washington judges awarding a $49 million default judgement against Bodog, and delivered the Bodog domains into the hands of 1st Technologies. Reacting fast, Bodog launched the new brand Bodog Life.com and continued its online gambling and entertainment facilities with minimal interruption.

Since then, Bodog founder Calvin Ayre has used his blog to repeatedly attack Scott Lewis and his company, describing it as a "patent troll." This has clearly irritated Lewis, who has asked Ayre to desist with the name calling. Judging by Ayre's latest posts that is not going to happen.

This week, Ayre claims that unnamed "domain evaluation experts" have advised him that the old Internet domains held by Lewis have declined in value, whilst the new domains have flourished.

"Although the value of Bodog's old domains has taken a huge hit since Patent Troll Scott Lewis and 1st Technologies launched a patent infringement case against [Bodog], the new Bodoglife.com domain is now worth over $1 million," Ayre writes. In contrast, he reveals that the domains held by Lewis have declined, quoting the following valuations:

Bodog.com domain value Jan. 17, 2007: $692,580
Bodog.com domain value as of Nov. 14, 2007: $264,930

"Well well well… if this ain't a kick in the pants then I don't know what is," Ayre crows: "After 2.5 months of having all of Bodog's old domains black holed by the Patent Trolls over at 1st Technologies, domain evaluation experts say Bodog's original domains have lost over 75% of their value, while the new Bodoglife domain is now worth over $1 million dollars and climbing."

The Bodog founder goes on to explain that several factors establish a domain's value, such as traffic (number of daily unique visitors), brandability (presence, relationship with customers, cultural relevance, emotional connection, easy to remember), search engine compatibility (listed in all major search engines, search engine friendly content), page rank (number of relevant websites that link to your site), domain extensions (.com), and linguistics (easy to pronounce) for starters.

"But one of the main determining factors—especially in the case of Bodog.com—is domain parking revenue," Ayre claims. "Why? It's simple: Revenue is a measurable factor and comparisons can be made for revenue to sale price of other domains."

"In our case we still maintain US and international trademarks on Bodog for the areas of entertainment (i.e. we are in many international domains such as Bodog.eu)," Ayre explains. "This means Bodog cannot be trademarked by anyone else. So this—combined with its having lost all of its search ranking, along with Bodoglife.com now being the top-ranked site for Bodog search—makes Bodog.com nearly valueless to anyone but us. Anyone who bought Bodog.com, as an example, would immediately be in court with us fighting a trademark case and thus making it difficult to sell for any high amount.

"Scott Lewis and the rest of the Patent Trolls over at 1st Tech really did not understand the Internet or branding when they shut those domains off…it was a pretty stupid conclusion to a fairly sophisticated legal mugging…they got so greedy at the last moment that their hormones started making decisions…and instead of quietly telling us they could shut them off and allow us to quietly send them a face-saving payment they went ahead and did it and then sent in that now famous extortion email that we ignored," the Bodog chief taunts, although that last sentence perhaps indicates a solution that might have been.

Ayre ends his current attack with a reminder that Bodog is not in this [1st Technologies] lawsuit, reiterating that the company is "...an assetless ex-supplier that shut down its operations in Sept. 2006 and was doing domain management for us that got sued."

Indicating that the legal battle has some time yet to run, he adds: "This is only a domain rights law issue to Bodog; it's not a patent case from our perspective. There is no winning outcome in this case left for the Patent Trolls over at 1st Tech. Even if they are finally able to sell the domains they stole from us, this will not cover their legal bills to date…and I predict their bills have only just begun with some of the fun I see coming their way."

It appears that 1st Technologies is maintaining the low profile approach to the issue that has characterised its claims to date - no further statements have been issued.

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