Likely seems a silly question to many.
The strategy of doing well at poker is something that feels unownable – like trying to own chess strategy and prohibiting anyone from using that term in their book or website title.
Silly or no, there is a group that believes they own the phrase “poker strategy” – online training and free bankroll provider PokerStrategy.com.
Despite being somewhat late to the game in terms of use – dozens, if not hundreds of sites employed some variation of the phrase “poker strategy” in their domain prior to the launch of PokerStrategy.com – PokerStrategy has nonetheless adopted an aggressive posture toward those who own domains with some version of what the company considers to be their protected trademark.
According to threads on various poker affiliate forums, including PokerAffiliateListings.com, the company has been issuing what appears to be a substantial amount of cease-and-desist orders to webmasters who own domains such as pokerstrategygeeks.com and pokerstrategyblog.com.
Below find some justifications from the legal department at PokerStrategy on the specific case of PokerStrategyGeeks.com:
1. PokerStrategyGeeks.com is the website of a venture that purports to operate under the brand name of “Poker Strategy Geeks” in providing online poker education, coaching, hand analysis, a poker community/forum, industry news etc. – all important elements of the PokerStrategy.com offering and services that are covered by our various trade mark registrations. The addition of the word Geeks to this mark is irrelevant;
2. PokerStrategyGeeks.com bills itself, without substantiation, as both the “Best Poker Community in 2012” and the “#1 Poker Strategy Resource” – this could cause confusion amongst the public at large who might expect such claims to be associated with a bona fide PokerStrategy.com offering, given our enviable position within the market place and the numerous industry awards we have been fortunate enough to receive over the years; [...]
It is for these, and other, reasons that we have taken the view that the registrant of PokerStrategyGeeks.com is doing more than simply referring to “poker strategy” in a good faith, English-language context and is, in fact, attempting to establish his own competing undertaking by providing identical, or confusingly similar, services to the public at large via a trade mark and associated domain name which is also confusingly similar to our own, thus seeking to unlawfully benefit from the goodwill and reputation already established in the POKERSTRATEGY mark.
There’s quite a bit more on the topic (link below) from both the legal team and the CEO of PokerStrategy, but the core of their position is that visitors could easily confuse a site with poker strategy in the name with the actual PokerStrategy.com, hence infringing on their trademark.
What do you think – is PokerStrategyGeeks.com drafting off of the work of PokerStrategy.com?
Source:
PokerAffiliateListings.com
