Support Michael Jackness (Protos Marketing) in his fight against Danel Moravec.
The post below was posted at Poker Affiliate Lsitings
My name is Michael Jackness and I’m one of the owners of Protos Marketing, known by many of you as PokerSourceOnline, PSO or PokerSource. As you may or may not know, our company owns a number of affiliate websites including a number of small-medium sites and a few large ones. The reason I’m making this post is that our company is currently being sued by Daniel Moravec/Best Odds Corp. (owner of MacPokerOnline.com) over our ownership and use of the domains MacPoker.com and MacPoker.net. The lawsuit is raising some issues that I believe will be of great interest to many of you in this community.
First, I would like to lay out some background about the case. To avoid the possibility of further litigation, I’ve gone to great length to ensure that everything I post here is entirely factual and not liable or slander in any way.
Dan is suing us for infringing upon his claimed trademark “MAC POKER” and he and his lawyers are demanding that we hand over the aforementioned domains and also pay damages. Dan filed for trademark registration with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. The USPTO has approved the application subject to the limitation that he would not have rights in the word “POKER” separate and apart from the entire mark. The mark has been published for opposition. We’ve asked for an extension on this trademark application and have 30 days (until Sept. 25) to file our opposition. This is where I’m hoping to get support from this community, and I’ll explain that at the bottom of this post.
Dan filed his lawsuit earlier this year. As a part of the lawsuit, he also asked for a preliminary injunction to shut down our two websites mentioned above. We were forced to go to court to fight this preliminary injunction. The judge denied the preliminary injunction without prejudice, allowing him to renew his request after the trademark application process is completed. Unfortunately, the case is still pending and we are forced to continue defending ourselves.
Our company is in a precarious position because while we prefer not to spend any more money on this lawsuit (legal fees already exceed $50,000), we really have no choice because it compromises our entire company’s position in the industry. It will also affect others who use the term “mac poker” to refer to the game of poker played on the Internet using a Mac (Apple Macintosh) computer. If Dan gets a federal trademark registration for “MAC POKER”, he will likely pursue others in the industry who are using the term “mac poker”. We believe it would be very detrimental for our company and the online poker industry if Dan establishes this sort of precedent. At the very least, anyone else who competes for the term “mac poker” or lists it anywhere on their site would be in danger.
I am asking the Poker Affiliate Listings community to help us oppose the trademark application and lawsuit mentioned above. If you optimize or promote anything related to “mac poker,” we believe this should be of great concern to you. Even if you don’t compete for those terms, this may still be a precedent that you, like we, would like to avoid setting. We are looking for people who believe and are willing to sign affidavits saying that “Mac Poker” is a generic term that refers to playing the game of poker online using a Mac (Apple Macintosh) computer and that it does not stand for or refer to any one particular company, organization or person.
Please feel free to post here or contact me privately if you’re willing to help with this case, as well as if you have any advice or comments. I’m looking forward to hearing others’ thoughts on the situation.
Best Regards,
Michael Jackness
Visit the PAL thread for more details.
