RotoPlay sues Sportingbet for copyright infringement

In recently issued international press releases, RotoPlay, Inc, the Hershey, Pennsylvania-based fantasy games company has informed that it has filed suit against the British publicly listed online gambling company Sportingbet plc. According to the press release, Goldstein & Faucett, Rotoplay's Houston-based legal team, has filed suit in case no. 2:05-CV-02761-JKG in Federal Court in Pennsylvania against competitor Sportingbet. RotoPlay has slapped charges of copyright infringement and unfair competition against Sportingbet related to two of RotoPlay’s "sports lottery" games, namely ‘Football Lottery’ and ‘Baseball Lottery.’ The allegation says Sportingbet copied RotoPlay’s lottery games and is offering the games on its sites as its original games. RotoPlay, Inc

RotoPlay, Inc. has been offering these sports contests since 2001. These highly popular games ask fantasy sports players to choose which six athletes out of a list of 54 will score the most fantasy points that week. Points are made depending on those athletes’ actual performances in the sporting event. The games also feature a prize pool for correctly selecting 4, 5 or all 6 of the top performers. The president of RotoPlay, Inc, Mr. Korey Gardner has alleged that Sportingbet has copied all their lottery games, unique scoring system, game rules, HTML code and tie-breaker information verbatim. Describing such plagiarism as shocking as well as disappointing, Korey said that the most puzzling part of the act was that Sportingbet went on to steal the games even after talking with RotoPlay, Inc for months about licensing their games and using them in a legal manner.