Things are looking bad for Bodog. A U.S. based judge just affirmed a ruling that could end up costing them around $50 million dollars. Given that they are not an American company, it’s possible that they will try to not pay the amount. Bodog’s founder has claimed that the company was not served in the original suit and that the company has an insufficient presence in the United States to infringe any US patents.

From Gaming Intelligence Group

Online gaming operator Bodog has failed in its attempt to set aside a $46.6 million judgement against it in the patent infringement suit brought by 1st Technology LLC. With interest, Bodog must now pay 1st Technology over $50 million following yesterday’s ruling.

Bodog was sued by 1st Technology for patent infringement based on Bodog’s distribution of software used for online gaming. A default judgement was issued against the gaming operator on August 1st 2007 after it failed to answer the allegations made against it in the suit.

As part of the ruling, the registrar of Bodog’s domain name was ordered to remove all nameservers associated with Bodog and founder Calvin Ayre, rendering them useless. Bodog subsequently changed its name to NewBodog before finally settling on its current name of BodogLife.

Despite numerous challenges by Bodog against the original judgement by the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

“We are extremely gratified for our client that the Court of Appeals saw the merits exactly the way we did,” said Mr. Greenspoon, the lawyer representing 1st Technology.

In August of this year, Parlay Entertainment settled a similar patent infringement lawsuit with 1st Technology. The terms of that settlement remain confidential and there was no admission of liability by either party.

This is the latest in a string of recent problems for Bodog. Most recently in July, Forbes magazine released news of an IRS affidavit from a forfeiture lawsuit in Baltimore, Maryland reporting an investigation into the matter of the seizure of over $24M in assets from bank accounts inside the United States that are said to involved in what appears to be money laundering activities in order to process payments to users of the Bodog online gambling casino. The filings are said to involve an elaborate international structure of bank accounts at numerous institutions such as Wachovia, Sun Trust Banks, Bank of America, Regions Bank, Nevada State Bank, a division of Zions Bancorporation in the name of Zaftig Instantly Processed Payments, doing business as ZipPayments.com and business’ said to be linked directly to Bodog founder Calvin Ayre.

If you have a lot of money in your Bodog account, you may want to consider diversifying your assets.

Looks like a patent troll has targeted Bodog and managed to acquire their domain name. Since Bodog is banned from operating in the U.S., they were unable to defend themselves against this seemingly ridiculous lawsuit.

Earlier today the Bodog website (bodog.com) went down. Many people thought it was just technical issues. A good friend inside Bodog pinged me and told me that the site was actually yanked out from under Bodog’s hands earlier today.

Apparently, some guy in the US who was awarded a patent for something to do with taking bets online filed a lawsuit against Bodog awhile back. Bodog didn’t respond because they are not a US company. So a judge awarded a default judgment of 50 million.

Yesterday, the guy with the judgment used it to seize control of Bodog’s domain names from Enom. Almost all of their sites are now offline, and now they are going to loose all of their SERPS.

Props to Shoemoney.com.