VEGAS GIANT GOES AFTER ONLINE POKER SITES

Sunday December 4,2011 : Four individuals and two companies targeted in trademark infringement law suits
 
Online poker businesses beware – if you are using Vegas land gambling group MGM's trademarks you can expect tough legal action.
 
The publication Vegas Inc reported this week that the land gambling giant has filed litigation in the US District Court in Las Vegas against four individuals and two companies, alleging trademark infringement.
 
Legal representatives for MGM Resorts International claim that each of the defendants registered poker-related websites between 2002 and 2005 that used names that MGM has made famous and synonymous with gambling through the expenditure of billions of marketing dollars, including:
 
bellagioonlinepoker.com;
circuscircuspoker.com;
excaliburpoker.com;
luxorpoker.com;
mandalaybayonlinepoker.com;
mgmpoker.com and
ariapoker.com.
 
“The defendants have or have had a bad faith intent to profit from their registration of the domain names,” the suit claims, asking the court for a temporary restraining order against the defendants to block them from using the domain names.
 
“The defendants have done nothing more than tack on the descriptive terms ‘poker' or ‘online poker' to each of the MGM marks to form the domain names. Accordingly, there is no question that the domain names are confusingly similar to the MGM marks," MGM's attorneys argue.
 
The defendants named in the lawsuit are Shahram Kolahzadeh, Evan Krentzman, Roberto Ciamillo, and Adam Majewski. The two companies named are PokerSons and RevNet.