Harrah's wants WSOP.com for poker series
by Sarah Polson
Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. has filed a lawsuit to try to gain possession
of the domain name WSOP.com which is currently owned by Federico Schiavio.
The company claims that it owns the trademark on the name "World
Series of Poker" and has applied for a patent on the name "WSOP"
so the site should be passed to them.
Schiavio, who was the information technology director for Binion's
Horseshoe Casino, purchased the domain name a year before Harrah's
purchased Binion's in 2004. His site, in which WSOP is an acronym
for the World's Standard of Online Poker, has poker information, directs
people to an online poker site, and looks to be developing its own
poker site.
Harrah's purchased Binion's to develop and profit off of the casino's
increasingly popular World Series of Poker. They claim that Schiavio
is profiting off of their brand, and, at the same time, associating
the site with online gambling which is illegal in the United States.
Harrah's lays out its claim in a 13-page lawsuit and is asking that
Schiavio be prohibited from using the WSOP trademark and be forced
to transfer the domain name to them as well as asking that they be
awarded damages.
The company has also asked that the court order the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office to reject Schiavio's application to trademark the
acronym and approve their own application instead.
Earlier this year, Harrah's had filed a complaint with the National
Arbitration Forum to settle the dispute. The forum decided that it
would inappropriate for it to make a decision while the trademark
office was considering Schiavio's trademark application.