NEW YORK — Gameologist, a New Jersey based and minority-owned small business, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Scientific Games, for infringement of trademark. This is the second such lawsuit that Gameologist has filed against Scientific for its infringement on the BLING trademark.
Gameologist developed the lottery scratch-off game BLING BLING and registered a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2003.
At that time, Gameologist met with representatives of Scientific Games and signed a three year license agreement with MDI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games, covering the BLING BLING trademark and the family of BLING Marks.
According to the lawsuit filed last month, Scientific Games pretended that it was not interested in the Gameologist trademark by terminating the License Agreement, only to introduce a game that infringed on Gameologist's protected intellectual property on several BLING games with several State lotteries.
The lawsuit alleges that in April of this year the New Mexico Lottery released a new instant scratch-off game called "Spring Bling" which utilizes the dominant trademarked word BLING. This game was developed and sold to the New Mexico Lottery by Scientific Games.
Gameologist's first suit against Scientific contains similar allegations based on Scientific's development of an instant scratch-off game called "BA-DA BLING," which was sold to, and subsequently released by, the New York Lottery, and its development of an instant scratch-off game called "$50,000 BLING," which was sold to, and subsequently released by, the Georgia Lottery.
"Gameologist plans to fully enforce and capitalize on its legal rights to the BLING mark," said Gameologist's lawyer, Craig Stuart Lanza of Balestriere Lanza PLLC. "Once again, Scientific has willfully infringed on the trademark rights of The Gameologist Group. This small company is due millions of dollars in damages under the Lanham Act for all of Scientific's clear infringements on the BLING Mark. We look forward to pushing both of these cases to trial to obtain justice for Gameologist, and to give large companies pause before they try stealing intellectual property developed by small, hard-working companies simply trying to pursue the American dream."
Lanza added, "Scientific's own code of business conduct states that Scientific Games will compete and win customers and their trust through fair competition and will not use improper or illegal means to gain competitive information that is confidential or proprietary to others. We plan to pursue all infringements vigorously and to ensure that Scientific abides by the standards it has set for itself."
Scientific Games is a gaming company that focuses on printed products, lottery systems, and diversified gaming. Scientific Games is a major player in the gaming industry, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.7 billion and approximately 6,000 full-time employees. According to MDI's website, a subsidiary of Scientific Games, over three and a half billion pull-tab lottery tickets have been printed to date for more than seventy lottery jurisdictions, the value of which is approximately $12.7 billion. Scientific, through its subsidiary MDI, has worked with lotteries across the world, including the New Mexico Lottery, to develop and print lottery tickets.
Gameologist Group LLC is a New Jersey based, minority-owned game design company specializing in casino style games and gaming products.
Balestriere Lanza PLLC is a trials and investigations law firm. They represent individuals, companies and institutions in criminal and civil matters in trial and appellate courts, in intense negotiations, during arbitrations, and before grand juries, securities regulators, and government agencies.
They need to win this lawsuit against Scientific games. It was clearly "theft" of intellectual property. I don't know why big companies think they can just steam roll over smaller ones. There is enough money for all. Seems like Scientific Games is very greedy, corrupt and manipulative and will stop at nothing to "win" those contracts.
If you think it was "clearly a theft of intellectual property" you clearly didn't understand what you read. This isn't a news article, it's a one-sided press release from a law firm that's attempting to publicize their client's allegations. As near as I can tell from this and their previous press release, their claim is strictly related to trademark infringement for uses of the word "bling". Unfortunately for them, "bling" and "bling bling" were in popular usage well before they decided to get their trademark, which is actually for "bling bling 2002". Claiming that "Spring bling" (ever here the phrase "spring fling"?) or "Ba da bling" (Ba da bing, anyone?) is an infringement simply for using the word "bling" is a lot like McDonald's claiming that use of the word "big" infringes on their "Big Mac" trademark.
The press release says that the client developed a game that they hoped to use their trademark with, but they don't seem to be making any legal claim that there is any infringement of a patent or a copyright. That suggests that they don't have any valid claim that they developed a game that was worthy of protection and subsequently appropriated by anyone else. If so, that leaves them with a pretty flimsy case.
XD, these are the same guys who are going to supply the Arkansas lottery.