The US District Court for the District of Nevada has granted a motion favoring MGM Resorts in the ongoing domain squatting case. Last Friday, the Court ordered domain names bearing MGM trademarks to be locked, placed on hold and deposited into the registry of the court pending a full trial.
The domain names in question paired popular MGM resort property names with “poker” and “online poker” including bellagioonlinepoker.com, excaliburpoker.com, luxorpoker.com, mandalaybayonlinepoker.com, mgmpoker.com, ariapoker.com and circuscircuspoker.com.
As justification for its ruling, the Court found that MGM “will suffer irreparable injury to its valuable trademarks and associated goodwill” if the court did not act to seize the domains. The Court added that the “Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims for cybersquatting and trademark infringement.”
In a lawsuit filed in December of last year, MGM Resorts alleged that the defendants intended to profit from the registration of domain names bearing their gaming brand names.
Though some of the domain names were registered as far back as 2002, the issue has gained importance as the US moves closer to licensing and regulating online poker.
