Here something you don’t see everyday a company filing three separate UDRP’s against the same domain name in the .com, .net and .org versions.
Today SHFL entertainment, Inc did just that on the domain names casinowar.com, casinowar.net and casinowar.org.
Although I have never heard of it, the term Casino War has its own Wikipedia entry and here is what it has to say about Casino War:
“Casino War is a registered trademark owned by SHFL entertainment, Inc., formerly, Shuffle Master, Inc. used in connection with a casino card game based on the game of War. The game is one of the most easily understood casino card games, and is one of the only card games where players can beat the dealer more than 50% of the time.”
The domain name CasinoWar.com is a developed minisite by the looks of it, having descriptions and links to online gambling sites.
Same for the .net
The .org also seems like a mini-site but its in Japanese.
The .com and .net seem to have the same has an original registration date of 2004, the .org has an orginal registration date of 2007.
We will let you know what happens with the cases.
The attorney handling the trademarks for CasinoWar.com is Michele L. McShane who is known for making all kinds of wild trademark claims as it relates to Mattel and Barbie Dolls. Several years ago they threatened someone who was running a Barbie doll fan site. If you search on “barbie” “we want the Miller’s House” you will see the stories. These are the kind of people who will litigate even when they know they are wrong.
BTW- the casino wars TM is for a card game so it is unclear to me if links to casinos would be infringing. They just filed another trademark in a different class so I would argue that such a case is not proper for the UDRP. The publication date for this new trademark app is January 13, 2013. Transferring the domain now would interfere with the domain owner’s rights to file an opposition to the TM and these issues would be ouside the scope of the UDRP. It seems to me a stupid move by CasinoWars.com to bring these issues up now before the TM application was published thereby alerting the domain owners of the potential challenge of the second TM.