Brand Protection In The Casino Industry

Strong brands and intellectual properties are extremely important in today’s world. They are basically the lifeblood of any company, business or even individual person. Social media influencers of today also make sure to protect their brands in order to monetise themselves to the best of their ability.

In the online casino industry, brand protection is a constant challenge. In this article, we will go over what forms of brand protection as well as brand infringements can be found in the online casino space.

Brand protection is generally not easy

Protecting your brand online can sometimes be rather complex. This is due to many people vehemently calling for things such as net neutrality and absolute freedom on the Internet. In many people’s eyes, the Internet should be free of any limitations, with some even going as far as saying that all forms of media should be free to share on the web. This includes movies, computer games, and music, which are all being shared among millions of users online. And, with the advancement of technology and connection speeds, cracking down on activity such as this has become even more difficult as years have rolled on.

While legal authorities can sometimes crack down on huge servers, there are always new ones popping up with peer-to-peer sharing being another major issue.

There is also a saying about how once you put something on the Internet, it can never be deleted from there. This has likely never been more true than it is now.

Online casino industry is filled with instances of brand infringement

The global gambling industry has always more or less belonged to the island of misfit toys when it comes to business. Unfortunately, there are plenty of bad actors in this space, and many companies tend to think that normal rules of the land do not quite apply when it comes to gambling. For instance, there are several online casino games that copy each others’ success with the exact same features while only substituting the name and the theme. One such example would be how the Swedish Play’n GO created its own popular version of Novomatic’s Book of Ra and named it Book of Dead instead. The premise in both games is almost exactly the same, yet Play’n GO has made a fortune piggybacking off of the success of Novomatic’s classic IP.

Another good example of a sort of brand infringement in the online casino industry is selling your services by using another brand’s name. This is especially common in the online casino affiliate space, where casino websites such as https://zimplerkasinot.net are monetizing and taking advantage of other companies’ brands. In this case, the actual domain name includes the name of a successful online payment company Zimpler. The site itself lists online casinos that use Zimpler for payments.

While one could argue that websites such as these are actually driving traffic and more or less advertising the brands in the domain names, this, too, is an unlawful practice that infringes on registered IPs.

Brand owners have their hands tied

What, then, can brand owners do to protect their brands from getting stolen and used for other companies’ monetary gain?

The fact of the matter is that brand owners are fighting an uphill battle. Protecting your brand from unlawful use is extremely difficult as there is so much infringing going on. It is a proverbial game of Whac-a-Mole, where once you put the hammer down on one case, another case is sure to immediately pop up. What makes things even more difficult is that many of the affiliates using registered IPs are not necessarily easy to locate. Their offices and physical addresses could be anywhere in the world.

In the end, most business owners and brand owners will just have to accept the way the world works and focus more on mitigating risks rather than fully stomping them out. This way, they can fight some of the unlawful use without spending too much resources on fighting a losing battle.