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Kalshi continues to take the stance that it does not offer gambling, but instead the platform provides a form of trading.
CEO of Kalshi, Tarek Mansour, has been very consistent—and deliberate—in arguing that what his company offers is not gambling, even though critics and regulators often say it looks like it.
Mansour has explicitly said Kalshi “should not be treated as a gambling operation.”
Enter the company's federal trademark request.
Dan Bernstein of Sportico writes that Kalshi petitioned the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the term “prediction market” last year and specifically asked for the scope of its proposed intellectual property rights to cover the gambling industry.
Specifically, Kalshi wrote it's product ties to “bookmaking services, namely, providing of information related to sports betting; organizing, arranging, conducting sports betting and gambling tournaments, competitions and contests.”
“Our trademark strategy is intentionally broad and designed to cast a wide net, not to define our business,” Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana wrote in a statement. “This is particularly important as companies in adjacent categories look to expand into prediction markets. A broader filing allows us to meaningfully protect the space and ensure that key terms are not used in ways that could blur distinctions between different products. This is not a characterization of our business as anything other than prediction markets.”
According to the USPTO’s manual of examining procedure, “An identification is unacceptable if it is inconsistent with the goods or services indicated by the specimens or if the ordinary meaning of the identification language is at variance with the goods or services evidenced by the specimens or any other part of the record.”
Kalshi operates as a financial exchange, not a sportsbook, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
