Court junks racetrack’s trademark suit against gaming company

A U.S. federal court has tossed out a lawsuit brought by several horse racing tracks who were after a gaming company over the latter’s use of track names.

The suit involved electronic gambling machines maker Encore Racing Based Games, which came out with a historic horse race system that allows players to bet in a pari-mutuel fashion. The results and the races include the names of the venues in which they were run, prompting well-known race tracks such as Oak Lawn Jockey Club to sue the gaming company.

In its lawsuit, the race track complaint that Encore had “infringed upon the plaintiff’s trademarks by using the race tracks’ names to identify the location where historic horse races had taken place,” according to the Paulick Report.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, however, didn’t buy Oak Lawn’s claims, saying that Encore is “fully within their rights to describe where an event took place in their wagering system without implying the owners of the racetrack are sponsoring the game.”