Harrah’s has recently announced it is suing Federico Schiavio, a former Binion’s IT manager who is the owner of the domain wsop.com. Harrah’s believes its World Series of Poker trademark entitles it to the rights for the wsop.com domain as well, alleging that the current owner of the domain is intentionally misleading visitors.
Harrah’s claims that “Schiavio’s use of the WSOP mark in connection (with) the domain name WSOP.com is intended to trade off Harrah’s goodwill and reputation.” While Harrah’s does own the WSOP trademark (which it purchased from Binion’s), the crux of their case revolves around whether or not visitors believe they are visiting the official WSOP site when they type in wsop.com, or whether it’s reasonably clear that the site could belong to anyone, not just Harrah’s.
