Online sports fantasy gaming outfit RotoPlay has released several international press releases informing that they are filing for litigation against multi-million dollar online gambling top cats, Sportingbet PLC.

RotoPlay’s charge, labeled case no. 2:05-CV-02761-JKG by Houston-based legal team Goldstein & Faucett with Pennsylvania’s Federal Court, asserts copyright infringement and unfair competition in regards to two of their sports lottery games, Football Lottery and Baseball Lottery.  The Hershey, Pennsylvania-based outfit has been offering these popular games and others like them since 2001.  Their recent discovery that English online gaming giant SportingBet have essentially cloned their lottery games and offer them still on their own family of sites has triggered RotoPlay’s decision to file suit.

“SportingBet copied all of our lottery games, unique scoring system, game rules, HTML code, and tie-breaker information system verbatim,” states Korey Gardner, President of RotoPlay, Inc.

The two games in question, Football Lottery and Baseball Lottery, allow players to select 6 athletes from an offered list of 54, on the basis of who they believe will score the most fantasy points through the course of one week.  Just like any fantasy sports game, the points are computed based on actual athlete performance for the week.  The better the performance, the better the chances of winning.  Bonus prizes are offered to players that choose 4, 5, or 6 of the week’s top performers.

RotoPlay’s President Gardner adds that “it’s very shocking and disappointing to see a billion dollar, publicly traded company like SportingBet so blatantly and willfully steal our games.  What is most puzzling to us is that SportingBet decided to steal the games even after talking with us for months about licensing our games and using them legally.”

Despite the lawsuit, RotoPlay continues to expand and grow as an online sports fantasy force.  December 11, 2006 marked a turning point for the company, as all assets assigned to www.rotoplay.com and RotoPlay, Inc. were purchased by IGC Entertainment Corporation, a subsidiary of Canadian company iGaming Corporation.  The total price of the acquisition added up to $300,000, a portion of which was paid upon the close of the agreement, and the other portion to be paid when RotoPlay attained profit goals set for the fiscal quarters from February 2007 to November 2007.

iGaming’s President and CEO Christopher Knape was confident and secure in his company’s new acquisition:  “The RotoPlay purchase represents an opportunity to broaden our product offerings to our core group of sports enthusiast customers.  With a very significant database of such customers, we are well-positioned to facilitate exciting growth for the RotoPlay asset.”

Fantasy sports is a booming online industry, produces more than $1.5 billion annually in North America alone, and is also estimated at expanding at an estimated 7-10 percent rate each year.  The industry is guaranteed to continue in its growth as fantasy sports betting has been left out from the recently passed Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Rotoplay’s fantasy sports games can be found at www.rotoplay.com and include games and contests in nearly any sporting event taking place globally.