DraftKings Petitions to Invalidate Interactive Games’ US Geolocation Patent After Cantor Fitzgerald Lawsuit

DraftKings has asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to challenge US Patent No. 12,406,284, which belongs to Interactive Games LLC and covers geofencing for gambling operators. The move matters for high-risk payments and wagering because geolocation is one of the basic controls operators use to stop bets, promos, and account activity in restricted jurisdictions.

1. DraftKings is attacking the patent itself, not just defending against infringement claims. The company filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office seeking to revoke US Patent No. 12,406,284, saying the patent contains nothing new and that its claims are obvious in light of prior art.
2. The patent gives gambling companies a way to block users from placing wagers when they are in a jurisdiction where betting is prohibited. It also controls the distribution of promotional materials and can alert users when they enter a restricted area. DraftKings says these functions were well known long before the patent’s 2009 filing and are now ubiquitous.
3. The petition comes after Cantor Fitzgerald sued DraftKings, accusing it of infringing patents allegedly tied to Cantor Gaming, the firm’s now-inactive gambling-technology arm. Two of the five patents involved in that April lawsuit were invented by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick while he was CEO of Cantor Gaming.
4. This is not happening in a vacuum. Interactive Games has also sued DraftKings and FanDuel over five patents, and DraftKings separately argued that those patents were too abstract to qualify for protection. In practice, this is a fight over how much of the geolocation stack can be locked up as patent IP versus treated as standard compliance plumbing.
5. There is precedent that could help DraftKings. FanDuel faced a similar challenge from Interactive Games, and the Patent Office eventually ruled that only one of the several claims was patentable. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board now has to decide whether DraftKings’ petition has merit and whether to launch an investigation.

For US sportsbook operators, geofencing is not an edge case; it is part of the compliance machinery. Because state-by-state gambling rules differ, mobile wagering businesses need location checks to stop a customer from placing a bet in a prohibited jurisdiction. That makes patent fights over geolocation more than an IP dispute: they can shape what compliance tools operators can buy, build, or be accused of copying.