Las Vegas gaming firm sues website owner

Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2001 | 10:27 a.m.

Station Casinos Inc. of Las Vegas sued to stop NetraCorp LLC of Kansas City, Mo., and its owner, Shane Kinsch, from using its Station Casinos domain name to advertise online casino and sports betting services.

In a U.S. District Court lawsuit, Station Casinos, which said it owns the stationcasinos.com domain name, alleged the defendants offered on Jan. 24, 1998, to sell their stationcasino.com domain name for $15,000.

The defendants claimed they "have been getting approximately 1,000 hits per month from people looking for more information on (Station) casino(s)," and that Station's domain name is "cumbersome" compared to their "marketable" domain name, the suit said.

The suit said the defendants' attorney, in a Feb. 19, 1998, letter to Station, said the defendants were "warehousing" the domain name, which was allegedly directed only to a page "for the sole purpose of selling that domain registration."

Steven Braun, Kinsch's attorney, disputed Station's allegations. "We've executed a settlement in late 1998. This suit is in violation of the settlement."

"When the settlement was made, I had stopped routing traffic to it. Station Casinos had all the legal paperwork to transfer the domain name to themselves, But Station didn't complete transferring the name to themselves and the domain name expired and was released to the public," Kinsch added.