DraftKings Asks the Patent Board to Void a Geolocation Patent Used to Sue It

Interactive Games sued DraftKings in Massachusetts in April over a patent covering geolocated mobile wagering and what a device displays when a customer is outside a permitted state. DraftKings' petition says Nevada rules required all of that in 2006, three years before the patent's priority date, and asks the PTAB to review it.

• DK Crown Holdings, DraftKings' operating company, filed a petition with the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board on 17 September asking it to institute an inter partes review of Interactive Games LLC's US Patent No. 12,406,284 and find all 18 claims unpatentable, NEXT.io reports
• The patent covers a mobile wagering system combining geolocation controls with how betting and promotional content is displayed, including determining whether a customer is in an authorised area and showing alerts when a bet cannot legally be placed
• DraftKings argues the claims combine mobile wagering, geolocation and display technologies that were known before the patent's claimed priority date of 13 February 2009, citing Nevada mobile gaming rules from 2006 that required systems to restrict wagering to approved areas
• Interactive Games sued DraftKings in the District of Massachusetts on 2 April asserting the same patent, one day after suing FanDuel in New Jersey; a previous FanDuel challenge to another Interactive Games patent saw the PTAB cancel all but one claim, upheld by the Federal Circuit in 2020
• The board must first decide whether to institute the review before any ruling on the merits, and a cancellation would materially weaken the Massachusetts case, DraftKings says

The Technology in Dispute Is the One Every US Sportsbook Runs

DraftKings has taken a patent lawsuit to the venue where sportsbooks have won before. Through DK Crown Holdings it petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on 17 September to review US Patent No. 12,406,284, held by Delaware-based Interactive Games LLC, and to find each of its 18 claims unpatentable, according to NEXT.io, which reviewed the filing.

The '284 patent describes a mobile wagering system that combines geolocation controls with the presentation of betting and promotional content on a user's device: determining whether a customer is inside an authorised area such as a state where sports betting is regulated, blocking wagers from outside it, and displaying alerts when a bet cannot legally be placed. That is a description of the compliance layer under every regulated US betting app, which is why the case matters beyond the two parties.

DraftKings' argument is obviousness. The petition says the claims amount to a combination of mobile wagering, geolocation and display technologies that were already known well before the patent's claimed priority date of 13 February 2009, and that a skilled developer of the time could have combined them in an obvious way. It points to Nevada's mobile gaming rules from 2006, which required systems to restrict wagering to approved areas and to detect when a device entered a non-gaming zone, and cites earlier patents and technical references for individual elements including battery management, ambient light and noise detection, digital signatures and device-to-device communication.

The petition is one front in a wider dispute. Interactive Games filed a patent infringement suit against DraftKings in the US District Court for Massachusetts on 2 April 2026, asserting the same patent, a day after filing a separate case against FanDuel in New Jersey on 1 April. DraftKings has identified the Massachusetts case as a related matter that the PTAB's outcome could affect, arguing that cancellation of the claims would materially weaken the infringement case. For now it is a petition only: the board must decide whether to institute the inter partes review before the merits are reached.

Interactive Games has been here before. In an earlier dispute FanDuel challenged another of its mobile gambling patents at the PTAB, which found all but one of the challenged claims unpatentable; the Federal Circuit upheld the surviving claim in 2020. DraftKings and FanDuel, competitors elsewhere, have jointly brought one PTAB challenge against a further Interactive Games patent. DraftKings was separately sued over micro-betting technology, and patent claims against Penn Entertainment, Light & Wonder and PrizePicks have made the sector a regular target.

A 2009 Priority Date Lands After the Feature Was a Regulatory Requirement

The strength of DraftKings' position is chronological. Nevada allowed mobile wagering within casino properties in the mid-2000s and, on the petition's account, its rules required location controls from 2006; a patent claiming a priority date of February 2009 for the idea of checking where a device is before accepting a bet, and telling the customer when it cannot, has to explain what it added to a system regulators had already mandated. Interactive Games' answer will be that the specific combination with content display and device features was new, which is the argument that kept one claim alive in the FanDuel case. Eighteen claims give the board a lot of room to split the difference, and a partial cancellation would still leave a lawsuit.

The Cost of Losing Is a Licence on the Whole Industry's Compliance Stack

If any claim survives and is held infringed, the remedy is a royalty on the function that lets a sportsbook operate legally at all, which no operator can design around by dropping the feature. That is why the two largest US books have acted together at the PTAB against the same patent holder, and why this petition matters to FanDuel, whose New Jersey case comes from the same plaintiff, as much as to DraftKings. It also explains the timing: an inter partes review petition filed five months after the complaint, at the point where the district court would otherwise be setting a schedule, is the standard move to seek a stay while the board decides whether the patent should exist.

Patent Assertion Is Becoming a Line Item for US Operators

Micro-betting, geolocation and now the display of promotional content are all subject to live claims against licensed operators, most of them from entities that do not operate a sportsbook. The regulated industry's compliance obligations create a well-documented, uniform technology footprint that is easy to read a patent onto, and the PTAB has become the operators' preferred forum because it is cheaper, faster and, on the FanDuel precedent, more receptive than a jury. The petition filed on 17 September is a routine defence in that sense, and an expensive one if it fails.

DraftKings has asked the board to find that a patent on checking where a bettor stands was obvious in 2009. Nevada's regulators would have agreed in 2006, and the question is whether the board does.