Gameologist Group has filed a complaint in a Federal District Court in New Jersey against the New York Lottery and Scientific Games Inc. for infringing on its trademark, the company announced on Monday.
The Atlantic City-based company claims that it met with representatives from Scientific Games in 2003 and had correspondence with the Lottery in 2004 about its trademarked lottery scratch-off game called “Bling Bling.” Gameologist alleges that at that time the game was found to be “too ethnic” and “did not meet lottery salability standards.”
Filed last month, Gameologist’s complaint said that the Lottery and Scientific Games conspired to use its “Bling Bling” trademark without entering a licensing agreement. According to Gameologist, in 2007 the lottery released a new instant scratch-off game called “Ba-da Bling,” which Gameologist calls “virtually an exact replica of (the) concept and utilized the dominant trademarked word ‘bling’.”
“This small company is due millions of dollars in damages under the Lanham Act,” Craig Stuart Lanza of Balestriere Lanza P.L.L.C., Gameologist's lawyer, said in a prepared statement. “This case is about two large companies stealing a small business's protected property, believing, wrongly, that Gameologist would not have the means to sue.”
However, a spokesperson for the New York Lottery seems to think otherwise.
“We're confident that we have the right to use the name 'Ba-da Bling' for an instant-lottery game,” the spokesperson was quoted by the New York Post as saying.