A TIMELY BRIT RULING
23 October 2009
Full Tilt Poker makes a legal pre-emptive
strike
In an interesting parallel story to the Kentucky
hearings, LexisNexis Butterworths reported on a legal
preemptive strike through its domain name registrar but
clearly aimed at the state of Kentucky...before a
British court!
Full Tilt Poker owners Pocket
Kings Limited took issue with the English domain
registrar Safenames Limited and another in case EWCH
2529 before British justice Mr. Michael Furness QC,
sitting as a deputy judge of the British High Court.
Reporting on the case, the ipkitten blog observed
that Safenames was contractually responsible for
pointing the fulltiltpoker.com domain name towards
Pocket Kings' domain name servers. The report goes on to
describe the events surrounding the Kentucky attempt to
seize domain names in 2008, noting that one of the
registrars ordered by the lower court Kentucky judge to
surrender client domain names was Safenames.
Pocket Kings sought an undertaking from Safenames that
it would not do any act that interfered with the use and
enjoyment of its domain name. When Safenames failed to
give such an assurance, Pocket Kings sued both Safenames
and Kentucky and applied for a declaration that the
court would neither recognise nor enforce the orders in
the Kentucky proceedings for the seizure or forfeiture
of the domain name.
The State of Kentucky failed
to acknowledge service and Pocket Kings applied for
summary judgment. Safenames said it was willing to
submit to judgment on agreed terms, so long as Pocket
Kings obtained judgment in default against Kentucky.
Lawyers for Pocket Kings argued that the
jurisdiction of the state of Kentucky exercised through
a domain seizure order on an English registrar would be
improper in that it constituted the imposition of the
criminal and public law of a foreign state on a British
company.
Long story short, the judgement went in
favour of Pocket Kings, placing the company in a strong
position in the event of future domain attacks.
Justice Furness accepted that the action was a
pre-emptive measure, finding: "The proceedings are
essentially pre-emptive in nature -- in theory the
claimant might have waited to see if the Commonwealth of
Kentucky would attempt enforcement proceedings and then
defended them.
"But this seems to me to be a case
where the pre-emptive approach was justified. The
continued use of the domain name is clearly important to
the claimant's business and it is at present in a state
of uncertainty as to whether the Kentucky proceedings
will be enforced."
Interested readers can read
the Judge's detailed findings here:
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2009/10/kentucky-in-no-state-to-seize-domain.html
Online Casino News Courtesy of
Infopowa
More news here.
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