Daniel Moravec suing over the term “MAC POKER”

The parent company of Poker News Daily, Protos Marketing, who also own MacPoker.com and MacPoker.net are being sued for trademark infringement. The case, which has seen Protos Marketing shell out $50,000 in litigation fees already, is still pending. Michael Jackness, Protos Marketing’s Chairman of the Board was named in the case. Jackness has since reached out to the Poker Affiliate Listings community to oppose the pending trademark application filed by Daniel Moravec of Best Odds Corporation.

Moravec argued that MacPoker.com tramples upon his domain MacPokerOnline.com and his claimed trademark “Mac Poker.” Jackness explained on the Poker Affiliate Listings forum, “The [United States Patent and Trademark Office] has approved the application subject to the limitation that he would not have rights in the word ‘poker’ separate and apart from the entire mark. The mark has been published for opposition.” Jackness has a deadline of September 25th to file his opposition.

As a result of the lawsuit, Jackness has reached out to the online poker community, asking its members to sign affidavits claiming that “Mac Poker” is a generic term and therefore should not be trademarked. He added, “If you optimize or promote anything related to ‘Mac Poker,’ we believe this should be of great concern to you. Even if you don’t compete for those terms, this may still be a precedent that you, like we, would like to avoid setting.”

Protos Marketing operates a variety of poker affiliate sites including MacPoker.com, MacPoker.net, Poker News Daily, PocketFives.com, PokerSoftware.com, and its flagship site, PokerSource.com, known by many in the industry as simply PSO. One poster in the forum, “pokerprop,” sided with Jackness and claimed to have owned domains relating to Mac poker dating back five years.

Jackness, who can be found on the Poker Affiliate Listings forums under the screen name “protosmarketing,” asked interested signers to PM their e-mail addresses so the company’s lawyers could forward an affidavit. Some posters inquired as to why Jackness wouldn’t counter-sue Moravec. His response: “We could counter-sue, and that might ultimately become an option. However, we’ve already spent $50K on this and I would rather just end this nonsense. No one is actually wining here except the lawyers.”

Others onboard in the thread include Atil Singh of Carbon Poker’s affiliate arm and “Jeremy,” who opined, “This is pretty shady in my opinion. It would be the equivalent of me trying to trademark the words ‘poker affiliate’ and shut down PAS or vice-versa. Seems shady to me, and you’re right, the only people making money on this are attorneys.” Others have facetiously recommended that Protos Marketing try to trademark “Mac Poker Online” and then file a lawsuit using the same logic as Moravec.

In a Google search for the term “mac poker,” MacPokerOnline.com comprises the top two results. MacPoker.com is in fourth, while CompatiblePoker.com is in third. MacPoker.net, meanwhile, sits at #8 in the search results.

Shortly after Jackness’ original post, he reported that he had dinner with Moravec and the two agreed to try to resolve their differences by last Friday: “The meal was quite cordial (after I blew off some much needed steam). My feeling from the conversation is that he wants to end this just as much as we do at this point.” Jackness later revealed that one possible outcome of the dispute was to have Moravec purchase MacPoker.com and MacPoker.net for “fair market value” and repay Protos Marketing’s legal fees.

On Saturday, one day after the two parties were to come to an agreement, Jackness reported that he had not yet received any settlement. When one more day had passed, Jackness posted a correspondence he had received from Moravec, who said, “I feel that the best person to decide if Mac Poker is trademarkable is the examining attorney, not you. If I do in fact gain ownership of the mark, I would be willing to discuss licensed use of the mark by Protos. I may also be willing to pay a reasonable sum of money as part of this settlement. However, I will not subcede to restricting myself from fulling my mark.” Moravec also volunteered to become an affiliate of PokerSource.com.

Meanwhile, Moravec’s girlfriend chimed in. Her profanity-heavy post read in part, “So what you all have shit involving macpoker, but none of you started doing anything about it. You were all like fleas on a dog’s back along for the ride… Now you wanna claim it like it was your idea… Way to be creative… Seems like all you guys wanna do is make money without actually having to work for it.”

Fighting the application by September 25th will cost Protos Marketing between $20,000 and $25,000, bringing the grand total to over $70,000.

Also at issue is whether TightPoker.com, a site formerly owned by Protos Marketing, had been marketing to the “mac poker” niche long before Moravec. Jackness asserted, “He actually copied TightPoker’s link and other strategies. This is all available on public record for everyone to see.”

Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest from the Mac Poker lawsuit.