MGM Sues British Domains
Everyone who goes to the Las Vegas Strip makes sure to take a stop at the MGM
Grand because it is world famous for being a great casino. This time the MGM
Mirage Operations Inc are involved in a lawsuit against Traffic Label Ltd and
Oded Keinan of London, England. The land based casino is accusing the online
casino of infringing on it trademark by having purchased and operating domain
names that infringe on the hotel and casinos that they have in their line up.
The casinos in question are the Monte Carlo, Mirage and the New York New York
hotels and casinos that adorn the Las Vegas strip. The reason why the lawsuit is
being followed is due to the fact that some of the websites that are owned by
the defendant have some links that have misidentifications of the Monte Carlo as
the Mirage.
There have been a lot of online casinos that are being taken into court due to
their negligence or infringement on the land based casino industry. The lawsuit
from MGM versus the online casino domain owner is being filed by the attorneys
John Krieger and Michel McCue who are from the law firm Lewis and Roca LLP. The
online casino domain owner that is being sued by the land based casino giant MGM
could not be reached for comment on their side of the argument. The lawsuit was
filed earlier this month and does give away a lot of detail about what a trial
may be like if this does go all the way through to a trial. This definitely will
not be the last that is going to be heard from land based casinos suing the
online casino counterparts that are taking advantage of their hard work.
The lawsuit that is being charged against the online casino domain owner Ode
Keinan and Traffic Label LLC charges read as follows: "Once a web user arrives
at defendants’ Web sites linked to the (infringing) domain names, the home pages
declare that the Internet user has arrived at the `Mirage Casino' website.'' The
lawsuit also says: "The home pages include a description of the world-famous
`The Mirage' resort hotel casino, which defendants, upon information and belief,
included to cause consumer confusion and create an impression in the mind of the
user that defendants’ Web sites and online casino links were or are sponsored,
affiliated, or associated with the trademark owners, as well as a photograph of
`The Mirage' at the top of the page. To further confuse the public, defendants
posted a photograph of the `Monte Carlo' casino in the body of the home page and
represented that `The Mirage' was depicted therein when it was not.''