David Baines of The Vancouver Sun reported yesterday that online gambling website Bodog.com was out of service Monday and remained inoperative Tuesday, apparently due to a $48 million default judgment obtained by a Las Vegas company against Bodog in a patent infringement case. Bodog is closely related to Vancouver-based Riptown.com Media which serves as Bodog's marketing, advertising, and design agency.
Bodog's short term solution to the problem was moving their entire gambling website to a new domain name - www.newbodog.com - which allows Bodog clients to resume their online gambling activities.
1st Technology LLC was awarded a patent for taking bets online and filed a lawsuit against Costa Rica based Bodog. Apparently, Bodog didn’t feel the need to respond because they are not a US company, so a judge awarded a default judgment. That judgement was enough to seize control of Bodog's domain names from their domain registrar eNom.
A lesson to businesses with potentially sensitive operations - registrar your domain names outside of the US. It is crazy to think that a billion dollar business can go completely offline due to the deactivation of a $10 domain name.
