Not long after the ruling was handed down from the Circuit Court Judge of Kentucky ordering the seizure of over 140 domain names, the iMEGA has filed a petition with the Kentucky courts asserting that it was unfairly denied legal standing in the case. By the looks of it iMEGA has a very strong case, because in the petition it states that some if not most of the domains owners are in fact members of iMEGA. That infringement actually went against a precedent that was established by Kentucky and the United States Supreme court entitling associations to assert the rights of their members.
Other notes that were in the petition was that the domains that are being ordered for seizure are located outside of Kentucky and for that reason gave no thought as to jurisdiction and erred in a matter that resulting in the irreparable deprivation of constitutional rights. The affected domains are not websites, or persons, or entities, or corporations, or tangible things. Also another piece of information stated that under Kentucky law under the cited statute, KRS 528.100, which is a penal statute, and not a civil one.
Below is a statement from iMEGA President Edward Leyden on the filing of the petition:
“As to our chances, we first believe that if there was ever a case that called for the appellate court to reach down and prohibit the actions of a trial court in order to prevent a miscarriage of justice, this one is it. The applicable Kentucky law is absolutely clear that the trial court utterly lacks jurisdiction over these ‘domain names,’ which, it should be beyond meaningful legal dispute, are simply not ‘gambling devices’ as KRS Section 528.010(4) — a criminal statute that is, by the way, subject to strict construction — defines the term. As importantly, the Commonwealth, through its outside contingency-fee lawyers, has trampled on fundamental rights of due process, not only by staging secret, ex parte hearings but by threatening the future of the Internet by emboldening any government — anywhere in the world — nursing a grievance about the content of any website to seize it under the same pretext as the Commonwealth of Kentucky invoked in Franklin County. We’re confident, however, that the Kentucky Court of Appeals will right all of these wrongs.”
Any new information that surfaces on this issue, Mac Poker Online will be one of the first to publish.
*iMEGA is a registered trademark of OAC Inc.