Antigua and Barbuda expects to receive a big damage award from the World Trade Organization in a long-running Internet gambling dispute with the United States, a lawyer for the Caribbean nation said on Monday.

“We feel pretty confident about our case, to be honest. We really feel like we have the upper hand here,” Mark Mendel, a private attorney representing Antigua, told Reuters ahead of an expected ruling by a WTO arbitration panel on Friday. In an April 2005 ruling, the WTO found a U.S. law allowing only domestic companies to provide online horse-race gambling services discriminated against foreign companies.

The United States has argued Antigua is entitled to only $500,000 in compensation because of that ban. But Antigua — which built an online gambling industry to replace declining tourist revenues — has asked permission to impose $3.44 billion a year worth of “cross-retaliation” on the United States.

It specifically wants permission to suspend copyright protections on American movies, music and software so its domestic manufacturers can export those products to the United States and potentially other markets, Lendel said.

“I think we provided plenty of proof to justify our figure … We feel pretty confident it should be a high number,” Mendel said. “I think there’s no doubt that we’re going to get the ability to cross-retaliate.”

Last year, the U.S. Congress tightened restrictions on Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.

In addition, the Bush administration announced in May it was retroactively excluding gambling services from market-opening commitments it made as part of the 1994 world trade agreement.

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