http://t.co/1hPVVhKV7C
Online poker’s Black Friday continues to slowly wind its way through the courts.
The latest loose end tied up yesterday as the DoJ reached a resolution with Avoine that resulted in a dismissal of the company’s claims to property seized on Black Friday.
Avoine filed a claim of ownership in January 2012 covering domains names, software and other intellectual property related to Absolute Poker, setting off a legal back-and-forth between the company and the DoJ.
Scott Bell (creator of soon-to-come doc UltimateBeat) saw the decision as a big win for AP/UB stakeholders. As Bell notes, this dismissal should clear the way for the (now-likely-near-to-worthless?) assets of UB and AP to be put on the government’s auction block:
In a 2012 post, Haley Hintze characterized Avoine as a company that “has been alleged to be the true hiding spot of the Americans who really controlled AP in the years following its acquisition of UltimateBet and its flight from America’s UIGEA.”
Avoine offered a slightly different description of their activities in court filings from October 2012:
From and after October 2006 – when Avoine’s predecessor, SGS, divested itself of Absolute Entertainment – and continuing to the present, Avoine has not been the operator of the Absolute Poker website, but has been in the business solely of licensing or otherwise attempting to monetize the value of its intellectual property – i.e., the AP Assets.
It’s not clear if the settlement between the DoJ and Avoine is a precursor to a larger deal involving other UB / AP principals.
Chris Grove - Chris is the co-founder and an editor of OnlinePokerReport.com. He's written for dozens of gambling publications and has been involved with various aspects of the online poker industry since 2004.