Today I’m blogging about a Notice of Civil Claim against Cake Poker. You can see it here. The claim was filed last week with the Supreme Court of British Columbia in New Westminster (a suburb of Vancouver). I found out about this claim on www.calvinayre.com.

I’ll make full disclosure up front: I have acted for a party that, in the past, had interests adverse to Cake. I have not acted for anyone involved with, and I have nothing to do with, this lawsuit.

Who’s suing whom and why? Two individuals, Ryan Bennett and Francois Piette, and their partnership and a corporation controlled by them are seeking damages from a number of parties apparently associated with Cake. These parties include Cake Poker (Canada) Inc. and certain of its alleged affiliates (including Cake Gaming N.V. and Yummy Interactive (Canada) Inc.). Also named as individual defendants are Nicholaos Mellios, Christopher Ruck, and Ian Winter, who purportedly own a “substantial interest” in the Cake Gaming network and are collectively alleged to be “responsible for all major decisions regarding” the network. Finally, some other individuals said to be direct or indirect shareholders in the network were added as defendants.

The basic claim is that, in 2001, Bennett and Piette formulated “an advanced business [and] marketing model” unlike any other model then being used by an Internet poker site. This initiative by Bennett and Piette is called the “Legacy Project” in the statement of claim. Apparently, “[t]he Legacy Project included a network marketing component whereby customers/players are compensated for referring other customers/players to the Legacy Project and who then receive a portion of the referred customers’/players’ winnings. It also proposed using photo real images on the website. These were then unique ways to obtain and retain customers/players.” So: the plaintiffs claim that they invented what is essentially an affiliate model for Internet poker.

More…