- WSOP.com today provided an update in the trademark case between Federico Schiavio, owner of the World's Standard of Online Poker ® (WSOP.com) and Harrah's Entertainment.
Federico Schiavio's lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, against Harrah's License Company, LLC and two related Harrah's entities (Case No. 06-5037 DSF (JCx)). The lawsuit alleges that prior to the sale of Binion's Horseshoe Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada to Harrah's in 2004, the former president of Binion's Horseshoe, Becky Binion Behnen, gave Schiavio the rights to the WSOP.com domain name and that Binion's saw no conflict between this domain name and the World Series of Poker. The lawsuit claims that Binion's was not using the term WSOP as a trademark, and exhibits filed in the lawsuit show that WSOP was not mentioned in the trademark assignment agreement from Binion's to Harrah's. Filed court documents allege that Harrah's has admitted that the trademark assignment from Binion's to Harrah's, which explicitly lists dozens of trademarks included in the transfer, such as World Series of Poker, "does not specifically identify the WSOP mark".
The lawsuit claims that Schiavio's rights in WSOP.com dating back to May 7, 2003, coupled with Binion's consent and authorization for Schiavio's WSOP.com website, provides him with the right to use WSOP.com to promote the World's Standard of Online Poker®, Schiavio's registered trademark. The lawsuit exhibits provide evidence of Harrah's admission that whenever poker tournaments were sponsored or produced, Harrah's and Binion's "always used the designation "WORLD SERIES OF POKER" to designate the source of origin of such poker tournaments". The lawsuit alleges that Harrah's has freely admitted using the term "WSOP" as an abbreviation for the World Series of Poker, Harrah's does not have any evidence that the term WSOP was used as a trademark by Binion's, the lawsuit asserts. The suit goes on to claim that when asked directly about this issue in discovery documents, Harrah's stated that whether the term "WSOP" had always been used by Harrah's and Binion's as an abbreviation for "WORLD SERIES OF POKER", and never to designate the source of origin of their poker tournament services, called for a legal conclusion. According to the lawsuit, the prior uses of "WSOP" and "W.S.O.P." as abbreviations by Binion's confers no trademark rights upon Harrah's.
According to the lawsuit, Harrah's did not like this result, and the lawsuit provides evidence that during the transfer of the business from Binion's to Harrah's, Harrah's very much wanted to work with Schiavio, or just "work Schiavio", to complete the transfer.
Because the facts surrounding this legal dispute are complex and span a period of many years, Schiavio has made available all the material related to the two and one-half year battle in an all-out effort to end Harrah's tactics that he has successfully withstood all this time, on his site at www.WSOP.com (scroll down to begin reading).
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