Arkansas lottery hit with trademark suit
By The Associated Press
This article was published March 18, 2010 at 9:15 p.m.
A Little Rock businessman filed suit Thursday against the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, arguing that the lottery should be ordered to stop using terms for which he secured the trademark years ago — including the phrase “Arkansas Lottery.”
Ed Dozier secured the trademark to “Arkansas Lottery” and “Arkansas Lotto” in 1994, and in 2009 he registered the term “Lottery Arkansas,” according to the lawsuit.
Dozier, through an office voice mail recording, referred phone calls to his attorney, Skip Davidson of Little Rock. Davidson said the Arkansas lottery should be ordered to stop “interfering” with his client’s use of the phrases.
The arkansaslottery.net Web site owned by Dozier’s company, Alpha Marketing, has a message on its Web site that the page is being redesigned. Before Arkansas had a lottery, Dozier sold novelty items, such as a T-shirt with the wording, “I’m Spending My Kids’ Inheritance on the Arkansas Lotto.”
Arkansas lottery director Ernie Passailaigue said he hasn’t seen the lawsuit.
“We’ll turn it over to our legal counsel,” Passailaigue said Thursday. Asked if he expected to fight Dozier’s claims, he said, “I hate to speculate.”
The lawsuit notes that the Arkansas attorney general’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to Alpha Marketing in May 2009, saying the office would sue if Alpha Marketing didn’t stop its marketing efforts. However, the office referred the matter to the Arkansas Lottery Commission.
Assistant Attorney General Bradford J. Phelps said in an Aug. 21 letter that he disagreed with Dozier’s claims but said the attorney general’s office “will not be taking any further action against Alpha Marketing at this time.”
Last May, when the issue of naming the lottery arose, the Bureau of Legislative Research revealed that it had secured a number of domain names, including naturalstatelottery.com and arkstatelottery.com.
At the time, Dozier said the lottery would use the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery name. For a Web address, the lottery secured myarkansaslottery.com.
“In my mind, that puts the issue to rest,” Dozier said back in May.
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