Background
For nearly two decades, table-game supplier MAO, Inc. licensed its STREAK® blackjack side bet to Ameristar Casino Black Hawk, a Colorado gaming property owned by Penn Entertainment, Inc. STREAK® is a trademarked side wager on standard blackjack tables that lets players bet on how many consecutive blackjack hands they will be dealt. Under a series of annual agreements, Ameristar operated five STREAK® tables — a product whose trademark rights belonged exclusively to MAO.
When the licensing relationship collapsed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, MAO filed suit in October 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, naming Penn Entertainment and its subsidiary Ameristar as defendants. MAO asserted claims under the Lanham Act (federal trademark law), the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, the Colorado Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and common-law theories of breach of contract and unfair competition.
In July 2025, Judge S. Kato Crews dismissed the Colorado Consumer Protection Act claim with prejudice — holding that a commercial licensing dispute between private parties does not rise to the public-facing harm the CCPA requires — and dismissed all other claims without prejudice for pervasive “group pleading” and “shotgun pleading” that made it impossible to determine which factual allegations supported which legal theory or what specific role each defendant played. MAO was given 14 days to file a corrected complaint.
The Court’s Holding
On April 21, 2026, the court again dismissed MAO’s intellectual property claims, finding that the second amended complaint still failed to cure the pleading deficiencies identified in the July 2025 order. The trademark and related claims remained insufficiently pled under the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard and Rule 8’s requirement of a short, plain, and specific statement of each claim. The court found that MAO continued to conflate Penn Entertainment’s alleged conduct with Ameristar’s, without specifying the theory under which the parent company was independently liable.
Judge Crews had expressly flagged this ambiguity in the prior ruling, noting that MAO had not specified whether it was pursuing a corporate-veil-piercing theory, an agency theory, or direct-participation liability against Penn. Despite having another opportunity to amend, the second amended complaint still left that threshold question unresolved.
Key Takeaways
- Federal trademark claims under the Lanham Act must satisfy Twombly/Iqbal: conclusory allegations of “unauthorized use” will not survive a motion to dismiss if the complaint fails to specify which defendant did what.
- Plaintiffs suing a parent company and its subsidiary must clearly identify the legal theory of parent liability — alter ego/veil-piercing, direct participation, or agency — from the outset; courts will not sort out the ambiguity.
- “Group pleading” (using “defendants” or “Penn and/or Ameristar” interchangeably) is a pleading defect that courts in the Tenth Circuit will remedy by dismissal, not clarification.
- Colorado’s Consumer Protection Act does not reach purely private commercial licensing disputes, even when the licensed product (a casino table game) touches the general public.
Why It Matters
The legal principles at stake apply broadly to any IP licensing dispute where a smaller company licenses technology or branded products to a large corporate enterprise through a subsidiary. When a licensor wants to pursue the parent company for the subsidiary’s conduct, it must make a deliberate choice about its legal theory from the start — and weave that theory clearly through the complaint. Courts will not fill in the gaps.
For brand owners who license trademarks or patented products to multi-entity corporate groups, this case is a cautionary reminder: identify which legal entity actually contracted with you, specify what obligations the parent undertook (if any), and choose your liability theory before filing. Vague references to a parent’s “control” over a subsidiary will not, by themselves, establish the parent’s liability in federal court.