SOURCE: The Vancouver Sun

Online gambling website Bodog.com was out of service Monday and remained inoperative Tuesday, apparently due to a $48.6-million default judgment obtained by a Las Vegas company against Bodog in a patent infringement case.

By Tuesday afternoon, Bodog had established a new website, www.newbodog.com, which is virtually identical to the old site and enabled Bodog clients to resume their online gambling activities. In a news release issued late Tuesday, Bodog founder and part-time Vancouver resident Calvin Ayre, said "the problems result from a dispute over the ownership of the Bodog.com domain name."

"We are fighting this dispute and are confident that we will win," he said in the release.

The release provided no details, but according to Nevada court documents, 1st Technology LLC of Las Vegas obtained a $48.6-million default judgement on June 14 against Bodog Entertainment Group S.A., Bodog.net and Bodog.com.

The Las Vegas company obtained the judgment after the Bodog companies failed to answer allegations, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, that downloaded software used by Bodog customers to facilitate its gaming activities infringed upon 1st Technology's patents.

It is not clear why Bodog officials did not respond to the allegations. One possibility is they were scared away by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has declared war on Internet gambling.

Through a series of high profile arrests of online gambling executives, the Justice Department has made it clear that online gambling is illegal and anybody operating or facilitating such activities is subject to prosecution.

Since then, Ayre has avoided stepping on American soil, but he continues to return to Vancouver, where Bodog runs a marketing-support business in Vancouver called Riptown Media and a call centre in Burnaby called Triple Crown Customer Service.

Ayre was in Vancouver as recently as Friday, when he attended a Bodog-sponsored mixed martial arts fight night at the Chief Joe Mathias Centre in North Vancouver. The event is packaged and sold as a pay-per-view television event.

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