PokerStars Patent for Rush Poker May Force Out Competitors

Full Tilt Poker owned the patent for a high speed online poker variant it branded as Rush Poker.  Following the shutdown of Full Tilt poker last year, a handful of other networks decided to launch their own version of the platform, one that moves players quickly from table to table upon folding a hand rather than wait for that hand to finish.

FTP looked like toast earlier this year, emboldening the competition, including the world’s largest real money online poker firm, PokerStars, to jump into the speed poker race without much concern over patent infringements. 

That seems about to change now that Stars has purchased Full Tilt Poker. 

From PocketFives.com:

Full Tilt Poker filed a patent infringement lawsuit claiming the intellectual property for its speed poker software had been trampled on. A patent claim entitled “Player-Entry Assignment and Ordering” was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January 2011 from two developers, John Davidson and Darse Billings of Pocket Kings Limited. The departure of Full Tilt Poker from the online poker industry approximately eight months following the application seemingly ended any debate on the issue.

Now with ownership of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars is looking to enforce the lawsuit that Full Tilt Poker began over the speed poker software. According to Casino Scam Report, PokerStars attorney Paul Telford stated, “Together with our patent attorneys, we are undertaking a full analysis of the Rush Poker patent applications we have acquired. When the time is right, it is our intention to use these patents to protect the inventive elements of the Rush and Zoom products.”

This may not be so cut and dry, as PocketFives.com points out.

Per Hildebrand, Chief Executive Officer of the Instadeal Network, insists the patent is “simply unenforceable”.

And there is a certain irony in what Stars is attempting to do.

“The funny part,” Hildebrand said, “is that their lawyers once must have concluded that the product is not patent-able. They launched Zoom and now want to argue it is.”

- Ace King, Gambling911.com