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Cashing in Lottery game rings up big sales for same-named gambling Web site

By TODD MURPHY Issue date: Tue, Sep 28, 2004
The Tribune

Somewhere in Trinidad, a group of online gambling bosses are stewing in indignation over an Oregon Lottery trademark infringement. Or, they're laughing all the way to their offshore bank. And - possibly inadvertently - they are helping pose these questions:
When is a trademark infringement really a trademark infringement? And when is legalistic outrage just a publicity stunt?

It all starts with a 4-month-old scratch-ticket Oregon Lottery game called Casino Fortune. Introduced in early May, it allows players to buy a ticket for $10 and win up to $80,000.
But - go figure - promises of "fortune"-filled casinos apparently exist outside of lottery scratch tickets. A Trinidad-based company has operated a gambling Web site - it's against federal law to base such sites in the United States - for nine years. It's also called Casino Fortune (at casinofortune.com) and had 1.9 million customers, according to Casinofortune.com officials, at the beginning of this year.

When Casinofortune.com officials learned of the Oregon Lottery's new game, they said they fired off what they call a "letter of inquiry" to lottery officials, asking them to explain why they were using a trademarked name that Casinofortune.com had long before registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

They got no response from lottery officials, Casinofortune officials said.
They got plenty of response, however, from Oregonians. In the month following the introduction of the lottery's Casino Fortune game, the gambling Web site's customers from Oregon increased 50 percent - from 8,550 to 12,455, according to Casinofortune.com officials.
Based on an average of $240 spent in the first month by new betting customers, the company estimated its Oregon windfall at $940,000.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword," said Dennis Rose, senior vice president for Casinofortune.com. The company wants to protect its trademark and doesn't want to deal with customers who, for whatever reason, are unhappy with the lottery's scratch-ticket game, Rose said. On the other hand: "We say thank you very much," he said.
But Oregon Lottery officials suggest that things may not be so simple.

First, they said, lottery officials have not received any sort of letter from Casinofortune.com "that is threatening any sort of litigation against us whatsoever," said Chuck Baumann, lottery spokesman. And, Baumann said, lottery officials have heard of no complaint being sent to the national vendor that created the scratch-ticket game and sold it to the Oregon Lottery.

That vendor, which is responsible for avoiding any trademark infringement, also has sold the game to state lotteries in Michigan, Idaho, New York, New Jersey and Kentucky, Baumann said. The company apparently has not pursued a trademark infringement case in any of those states, Baumann said.

Baumann said the vendor's lawyers believe there is no trademark infringement because a scratch-ticket lottery game is different enough from a gambling Web site that customers shouldn't be confused that the games are being offered by the same entity.
He also questioned whether a scratch ticket game that is not heavily played in Oregon could bring such heavy business so quickly to a gambling Web site. Baumann said he had heard a $500,000 figure as Casinofortune.com's Oregon windfall.

"For them to realize a half-million-dollar jump and attribute that to a lottery ticket that really isn't a big seller . I think that's a stretch," Baumann said.

But news stories detailing the confusion, and the alleged windfall, don't hurt Casinofortune.com, Baumann suggested.

"It's unpaid advertising, and it's not negative toward them," he said.

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