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A Kentucky Appeals court ruled Friday (February 21, 2014) that the state cannot seize 132 online gambling domain names. The court determined that a trade organization, the Interactive Gaming Council, can step into the 6-year-old case and represent operators of named websites. An earlier ruling declared that trade organizations such as IGC and the now defunct Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA) lacked standing.
Judge Allison Jones, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, noted that Kentucky has treated the domain names as a group for much of the litigation but wants to handle them individually now to prevent the trade association from becoming involved.
"The Commonwealth cannot now turn the tables and ask the court to require each domain name owner to come forward individually and assert virtually identical legal arguments through separate counsel to resolve threshold, purely legal issues that affect the validity of the entire forfeiture procedure," Jones wrote.
The appeals court sent the case back to Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Wingate for further hearings.
"Obviously, we consider this a win," said Interactive Gaming Council CEO Keith Furlong. "We are also proud to be a catalyst for this decision which provides guidance to all associations seeking to represent their members in the Commonwealth of Kentucky."
Jennifer Brislin, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Justice Cabinet, said the opinion is being reviewed and there's been no decision about whether to file an appeal.
"Also, as a result of the Commonwealth actions, most of the websites that are the subject of the in rem domain name case have stopped doing business in Kentucky," Brislin said.
In an ironic twist, the vast majority of Internet gambling websites named among the 132 have since altered their address to a .ag, .eu or other variant after a series of unrelated US Justice Department domain seizures of online gambling sites in 2011. Most notably, PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, two of the world’s largest online poker sites, had their respective domain names seized following an April 15, 2011 indictment commonly referred to as “Black Friday”. Several other site domains, including Bodog.com, have since been seized. In the case of Bodog.com, that company had completely changed its name and mostly abandoned the Bodog.com URL.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
