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What is Grape Escape?
Citing U.S. code, the gaming company is pushing for an inter parties review while requesting that the board find the 18 claims in question “unpatentable.”
Patent squabbles, including those pertaining to geolocation services, aren’t unheard of in the online gaming space. How things shake out in the Cantor Fitzgerald/DraftKings spat remains to be seen, but it’s possible the deck is stacked against the gaming company.
The Commerce Department has jurisdiction over the USPTO, meaning Lutnick is the boss of the USPTO Director John Squires. Squires, who became 60th director of the USPTO a year ago, has been publicly effusive in his praise of Lutnick.
About Grape Escape
In April, a federal jury sided with Skillz (now operating as Firy Inc.) on its claims that Papaya deceived consumers by utilizing computer bots in its head-to-head mobile games.
Three months later, Judge Denise Cote ordered Papaya to pay Skillz $719 million in damages for poaching players from its skill gaming platform on the belief that Papaya had more players and therefore facilitated considerably faster peer-to-peer pairing times.
Papaya, headquartered in Israel, quickly secured a temporary stay of proceedings from the Tel Aviv District Court and filed a Chapter 15 petition with Delaware’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The Chapter 15 petition seeks to prevent Skillz from initiating collection efforts until its appeals play out.
About Grape Escape
Another bettor noted that gambling debts fractured personal relationships: “Sports betting ruined my six years of friendship because I couldn’t pay back the borrowed loan from my friend. He stopped talking to me.”
Americans wagered nearly $167 billion on sports in 2025 through regulated sportsbooks, an 11% increase year-over-year, according to data from the American Gaming Association (AGA).
The blurring line between financial investing and gambling has been accelerated by the rise of prediction markets—exchanges offering event contracts that are federally regulated as financial derivatives. U.S. News found that over 40% of active sports bettors now also participate in sports prediction markets.
