Betting giants raise the stakes in legal battle over their brand names

A legal war over naming rights between two of Australia’s biggest online sports-betting companies has taken a turn, as BetEasy launches an application to terminate the brand name of its main rival, Sportsbet.

The retaliatory legal action – launched in the lead-up to the Melbourne Cup Carnival, the busiest wagering period of the year – comes after Sportsbet successfully obtained a temporary ruling quashing CrownBet’s plans to rebadge as “Sportingbet” in the wake of its split from billionaire James Packer’s Crown Resorts.

In June, Sportsbet argued the name “Sportingbet” was too similar to Sportsbet, and likely to “mislead or deceive” customers. Against a tight deadline, the temporary orders forced CrownBet to scrap its intended rebrand and relaunch the business as BetEasy instead.

In a new cross-claim, filed in the Federal Court, BetEasy is arguing that if the court ultimately sides with Sportsbet’s position that the two names are “deceptively similar”, it should also cancel the “Sportsbet” trade mark, because, at the time the trade mark was registered, there were multiple other betting providers including Sportingbet and TAB Sportsbet already in existence in Australia.

“Various sports betting service providers other than Sportsbet have operated in the Australian market using trade marks comprising the words ‘sport’ and ‘bet’, or derivations of those words to seek to distinguish their services,” court documents claim.