Interview with RotoPlay CEO Korey Gardner Regarding Lawsuit Against Sportingbet, PLC.

Hershey, PA (PRWEB) September 28, 2005

Recently, RotoPlay, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Sportingbet, PLC case no. 2:05-CV-02761-JKG for various Intellectual property infringements.

RotoPlay President and CEO Korey Gardner sat down with Gaminginvesting.com's Kurt Stine to discuss the pending lawsuit against Sportingbet, PLC and to offer facts regarding the claim:

• First off, please tell us about RotoPlay, Inc and what services and products you provide?

RotoPlay, Inc. is a 4-year old fantasy sports business that specializes in unique and innovative games for the fantasy sports community. While most fantasy sports companies run a similar style season-long contest, RotoPlay's niche is providing the industry with shorter-term contests that are both unique in nature and a break from the traditional style games in the market today. This strategy has served us very well in the 4-years we have been in business.

RotoPlay will also be the first and only company to offer a program where sports fans will have the opportunity to make a full or part-time income in the fantasy sports industry. It is a unique program that has received a tremendous amount of interest. We're excited to offer that opportunity to the general sports public.

• You recently filed a lawsuit against Sportingbet for infringement against your “lottery” games. Can you please tell us more about that claim?

Absolutely. In 2002, an employee of Sportingbet contacted RotoPlay inquiring about our lottery games. After lengthy e-mail exchanges, in which Sportingbet asked for game history and data, back-office access, & account information, Sportingbet indicated to us, via e-mail, that they really liked the “lottery” games and would like to purchase the product. Before any financial licensing arrangements were even discussed, Sportingbet stopped communicating with us. At the time we assumed, for whatever reason, they were no longer interested in the product.

In the fall of 2003, Sportingbet copied our lottery games verbatim and were offering them as their own on various Sportingbet owned websites, including their most popular ones. We were shocked to say the least.

• Prior to the lawsuit being filed, did you contact Sportingbet regarding their actions?

Yes. I e-mailed Mark Blanford who passed my e-mail on to Kathy Cena. Even after sharing the e-mail exchanges and identical game evidence to Ms. Cena, she claimed no wrong-doing. We attempted to contact Mr. Blanford again as well as Nigel Payne regarding the issue but both gentlemen ignored the communications.

What is interesting to note however is that while Sportingbet claimed no wrong-doing, we found it very interesting that after the e-mail communications they modified the lottery games slightly to try and cover-up their actions.

• Nigel Payne denied any wrong doing and called your lawsuit “scandalous.” What is your response to those remarks?

I invite Mr. Payne or anyone for that matter to go to http://www.archive.org and use the wayback machine tool to visit our website http://www.rotoplay.com in the Fall of 2002. Our football lottery game is present and live. Using that same vehicle, check http://www.sportsbook.com. You will see there is no lottery game in 2002.

Now, turn the clock ahead to the Fall of 2003. Using the same vehicle for both websites, look at the football lottery game at both sites. You will see they're identical. The scoring system, rules, HTML code, tie-breaker information, etc is all the same.

The sportsbook.com site is just one example. They copied both our football and baseball lottery games and placed them on six of their most popular websites.

I'm not sure how Mr. Payne denies any wrong-doing when the evidence is there for everyone to witness. If Mr. Payne quotes that they did nothing wrong, then why would he and his legal team be trying to offer settlement amounts to us now?

• Mr. Payne has stated that a licensed product at RotoPlay is $60,000 per year. Is that true?

I appreciate Mr. Payne pricing our product for us. To the best of our knowledge, there never was an amount quoted to Sportingbet. Even if there was, it is irrelevant at this point. When a company willfully steals the IP of another company, statutory and other damages can and shall be awarded. Using an analogy from my legal team Goldstein & Faucett, if you pull up to a parking meter and decide to take a chance and not put a quarter in, when the cop stops by and gives you a ticket, you can't just pay a quarter and make everything go away.

In addition, when we were in e-mail dialogue with Sportingbet in 2002, we specifically expressed to them that we would not license the game if they offered a higher prize pool than we offered. They communicated and assured us that they would not offer a higher pay-out. Well, that did not hold true. They placed their guaranteed prize pool much greater than ours and ignored that key fact.

RotoPlay's IP has also significantly grown in value over the past few years. Sportingbet continues to act in bad faith by offering our lottery games illegally.

There seems to be some disagreement over the amount of “potential” damages. Can you elaborate on your position?

For legal reasons, I can't elaborate on specifics, however we believe the discovery period will reveal all the details needed to support our damage model and claim. In the U.S., willful infringement is a serious offense, particularly on a commercial scale. There is little question Sportingbet acted willfully in this case and committed multiple infringement violations.

Their actions also caused irreparable harm to RotoPlay's plan to unveil a major marketing campaign centered a round the lottery games. Those plans had to be scrapped.

The evidence and facts of this case are very clear. RotoPlay is prepared to fight for our IP rights and we're extremely confident the legal system will agree with our assessment.

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