Sheriff wins court ruling against Betsoft
Dutch court finds Alderney licensee not to be in infringement of Betsoft's IP rights over "zoom effect"
Alderney-licensed software firm Sheriff Gaming has won a ruling against fellow slots provider Betsoft Gaming over an alleged intellectual property infringement.
The court of appeal, in the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, reinforced earlier findings of the Court of First Instance, which found in favour of Sheriff Gaming’s parent company Bubble Group.
The court ruled Bubble Group was not in infringement with regards to Betsoft’s ‘Expandicon’ effect, a zoom effect which takes force when a player hits a winning line on one of the provider’s slots.
Bubble Group argued in a statement that the effect was “an elaboration of the dolly zoom effect, which has been common for decades”.
Sheriff questioned whether Betsoft held copyright over the technology, and also took issue with Betsoft’s decision to contact clients with allegations of copyright infringement against Sheriff.
Betsoft has been ordered by the court to “[immediately] refrain from any communication to third parties that the use of the dolly zoom effect, or at least the Expandicon effect, in Bubble’s slot games infringes Betsoft’s copyrights and patent rights,” the ruling explained.
Following the ruling, Betsoft is required to pay costs of the court proceedings and must also pay a penalty per day “or part of a day” in which it is found to be in infringement of this order.
The Dutch case was the third separate legal dispute between the parties. Sheriff Gaming CEO Stijn Flapper told eGaming Review that following similar allegations of IP infringement in 2011 Betsoft had been unable to supply Sheriff with paperwork verifying its ownership of the technology behind zoom effect when requested.
Betsoft reporetedly requested a “provisional examination” of Flapper to determine whether copyrights had been breached, which was denied.
Flapper described the efforts as “a fishing expedition” and added the court stated Betsoft had “no legitimate interest for a preliminary hearing”.
“For us that’s the end of the story – we’ve proved to the court they say they have what they don’t have with the copyright on the zoom effect,” Flapper told eGR, following last week’s court of appeal ruling.
“Three times they have had the chance to show the courts they have the alleged IP-rights, but three times they didn’t even show the courts that they had any rights on Expandicon technology,” he added.
“It’s easy, when you have copyrights or patents these are registered in a database, you take it out of the database and that’s it.”
Update: eGR has received the following statement from a Betsoft spokesperson:
“This case was one of many legal steps taken to protect the Expandicon technology; further action is being taken at an international level and [we] will vigorously continue to do so.”