Sold It

About Sold It

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.

More relevant to DraftKings is the fact that under his leadership, the patent office has moved to significantly limit access to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) – the very board to which the gaming company is appealing in an effort to have the Cantor patent annulled.

What is Sold It?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) agrees, continuing to defend its claimed “exclusive jurisdiction” over sports prediction markets in federal and state courts across the nation.

The legal wrangling extends to Michigan, where Attorney General Dana Nessel has rejected Polymarket and the CFTC’s arguments that the Michigan Gaming Control Board has no regulatory authority over prediction markets, even the ones allowing traders to buy and sell shares of sports outcomes.

Since returning its prediction market to the US, Polymarket has regularly engaged in nonconforming advertising. Painting a water tower in the company’s blue and branding the structure with its logo is the firm’s latest marketing ploy.

How to play Sold It

Humor is inherently subjective, but the only plausible reason to dismiss Carrot Top after seeing his show live isn’t a distaste for kitsch—it’s being easily offended.

Carrot Top deserves credit not only for his sharp punchlines, but for never growing bitter about becoming a punchline himself. He has always leaned into the jokes made at his expense. That self-awareness is precisely why his cameo in the end-credits photo collage of The Hangover landed so brilliantly.

If you dismiss Carrot Top, it almost certainly means one thing: Like us, you judged his act before seeing it. Giving the show a chance proves his stagecraft vastly funnier than any punchline ever used to dismiss it.