Part 1.

I mentioned a while ago how the Seminole Indians were threatening me, but I never ended up telling the story (after saying that I would). Well, I guess I will share what happened now that some time has passed and I'm not as bitter about it.

Some background: For those who don't know, the Seminole Indians control many of the Florida casinos (the biggest being the Tampa Hard Rock and the Hollywood Hard Rock). Last year they introduced a new tournament that they called the 'Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open' with a $10,000,000 guaranteed prize pool and a $5k buy-in. At the time this was the largest guaranteed prize pool for any live tournament. Obviously they wanted this to become a flagship tournament series, second only to the WSOP.

When I first heard the name of the series 'Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open', I laughed at the name they came up with. It was overly long and generic. Of course it seemed obvious that they would shorten it to SHRPO. I used to be involved with the domain name industry, so on a whim I looked up SHRPO.com, expecting it to already be registered. But to my surprise, it was available. Instead they chose to use the name SeminoleHardRockPokerOpen.com to advertise the series.
:FAIL

I then did a trademark look-up for SHRPO and found no trademarks for it, only for 'Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open'. So I snap regged the .com and .net versions. Of course I registered these domains with the intention of having them approach me at some point to buy them from me. While I was far from an expert in trademark/cybersquatting law, I knew it was a bad idea to have ads on a site or reference the end-user in any way. So I just put up a very generic page that said "This domain name may be for sale... contact [my email] for inquiries." Eventually I was going to contact them and inform them that I have a domain name that may be of interest to them, but I didn't want to do this right away. I wanted to wait until after next year when the SHRPO 2014 was approaching. That way the brand would be more developed and valuable by then. And sure enough, throughout the tournament series in 2013 they used #SHRPO to tag everything and frequently used SHRPO as short-hand, even though on their official signs they had to advertise the ridiculously long SeminoleHardRockPokerOpen.com.

Well, the tournament went by in August and I didn't think much of the domain. I just sort of filed it in the back of my mind even though I knew it was a pretty valuable domain name. Side note: I played the SHRPO main event and busted day 1 obv. September and October went by and nothing happened in regards to the domain name. They didn't contact me, and I didn't contact me. I had my registration info public, but I had moved from Orlando to Chicago in that time and didn't update my address. However I had my e-mail up on the homepage so it would still be very easy to contact me.

Then in November (of 2013) something strange happened. I ordered some food from Grubhub to be picked up at a nearby restaurant. I went down to my apartment lobby and fiddled with my phone as I waited for the app to tell me my food was ready for pick up. While doing this, I looked up and saw a tall black guy dressed in a suit standing in my lobby holding a tablet & signature pen and an oversized envelope. I thought it was weird. He looked like he was trying to deliver a package that needed a signature, but he wasn't dressed in a delivery uniform and he was just waiting in the lobby. It also seemed like he was staring at me without being too obvious about it. I thought he was going to say something to me or ask a question, but he never said anything. He was also giving off a 'weird' vibe that I can't quite describe. He actually reminded me of 'Matthew Abaddon' from LOST. I exited my lobby because I was kinda creeped out by the guy and my food was almost ready to be picked up anyway. About a minute after I leave my lobby my phone rings. I look down and my phone says 'buzzer', which basically means that somebody dialed my code on the building buzzer to try to get in to the building (I can buzz people in via my phone). I look across the street at my apartment and sure enough the guy had left my building and was now standing by the buzzer, meaning he dialed my code. WTF. Anyway, I ignored the call and went to go pick up my food. When I came back the guy was gone and I didn't think of it anymore.

The next day I got a letter in the mail addressed to me from an attorney. I noticed they had already tried sending it to my old address in Florida and it got sent back to them and updating them on my new address. I also received a slip saying I had a parcel to be retrieved from the post office that I had to sign for. Here's what was inside the envelope:
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The parcel I had to sign for contained the identical letter and nothing more. When I went to pick it up, the post office lady ID'd me. Then after she gets my envelope she says "Wait, I need to see your ID again" and told me that I had to be 18+ to sign for the package. She said it was weird and that she had never seen that before. I was actually relieved to see the same letter in the envelope. I thought it was going to be a court summons since they had sent me the letter several weeks before I received it due to changing addresses, and I was supposed to respond with-in 5 days.

Anyway, I looked up the trademark for SHRPO again, and sure enough the Seminole's had a pending trademark on it. But they didn't file a request for the trademark until several months AFTER I had already registered SHRPO.com and .net.


And I am writing this at 4am and don't feel like finishing the story. So I will make it a multi-part story to add some suspense. Stay tuned for part 2, coming soon.