Carmen Media sees off domain pirates

News on 12 May 2009

The owner of the Carmen Media group trademarks and domains, Stanworth Development Limited, has successfully claimed domain names that attempted to hi-jack its reputation and status in actions with the WIPO Mediation and Arbitration body.
Stanworth is described as the proprietor of a number of pending and registered trademarks consisting of or incorporating the words Jackpot City in various jurisdictions including Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The trademarks cover, in general, entertainment services, namely, providing on-line games of chance, games of skill and casino-style gaming services rendered on-line. All contain the words ‘Jackpot City’ with various other words such as “casino” or “.com” or game names such as “poker”.  Other cases involved the abuse of the domain attached to River Belle Casino in the same group.
The earliest of the registered trademarks was filed for on June 22, 2001 and granted on March 8, 2002.
In case D2009-0332 Stanworth Development Limited accused one Chad Creighton of taking advantage of derivations of its registered domain and brand River Belle Casino. Creighton did not respond or otherwise defend the issue and was ordered to transfer the domain to the plaintiff.
In case number D2009-0260, Stanworth took on Susana Gonzales of Smart Answer S.A. in Panama, claiming:  “Carmen Media Group Limited, has operated the “www.jackpotcity.com” website since late 1998. That website receives in the region of 250 000 visitors and facilitates over 25 000 software downloads each month. In addition, many thousands of registered players regularly make use of the “www.jackpotcity.com” gaming site with a substantial portion being active on the site at any given time. An amount in excess of USD 50 000 per month is spent on various advertising, marketing and other promotional activities, including banner listings on portal sites and search engines, direct mailing campaigns, affiliate programs, print ads, TV commercials and infomercials.”
The respondent did not defend the action, and Gonzales and her company were ordered to transfer the disputed domain name jackpotcityonlinecasino.org to the plaintiff.
Stanworth Development Limited opened WIPO case D2009-0259, citing Dana Paulson of St. Charles, Illinois and demanding the transer to it of her domain registrations bigjackpotcity.com and megajackpotcity.com – both registered with GoDaddy.com, Inc.
The respondent did not defend the action and was ordered to transfer the domains to Stanworth.

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