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U.S. Slot Company Sues PartyGaming (2 of 2)

When PartyGaming lost, however, WMS demanded that an Illinois-based federal judge increase their award by more than one hundred times. U.S. copyright law maintains that infringement victims are entitled to recover not only the defendant’s profits obtained on the trademarked material, but all applicable damages and costs to the plaintiff. Because PartyGaming refused to disclose the breakdown of what income in the U.S. was obtained from any online slots that might not have infringed on WMS’s trademark (or anything, really, since they didn’t show up!), WMS believes that it is entitled to ALL the company’s U.S. profits for the years it was fraudulently using the copyrighted terms – 2004, 2005, and 2006.

U.S. District Judge Blanche Manning of the Northern District Court of Illinois had been the one to hand down the original amount of damages (two-point-six million) against PartyGaming, based on WMS’s own estimates of their losses from the online slot machine copyright infringement in one of the years in question, times three. When WMS brought the case before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week, however, the federal court sent the case back to Manning with the request that she revise the penalty against PartyGaming to reflect the higher amount asked for.

PartyGaming is considered to be in contempt of court by not showing up. The online slot machine software company issued a statement expressing the belief that, since the company has no physical premises in the United States, they are not bound by its courts’ jurisdiction.

Back to October 2008 Archive.