Aristocrat Leisure has settled an intellectual property dispute in Australia with a former employee named in its Dragon Train lawsuit.
Aristocrat Leisure has settled an intellectual property dispute in Australia with a former employee accused of stealing thousands of documents.
The Australian slots giant announced last week it had settled a dispute with its former game designer Dinh Toan Tran on favourable terms.
It followed Aristocrat filing an urgent ex parte application in the Federal Court of Australia in January 2024, after which it obtained injunctions and search and seizure orders against Tran.
Aristocrat CEO Trevor Croker said: “Aristocrat is an ideas and innovation company at heart. Our intellectual property is therefore vital to our ongoing success, and we are committed to protecting the great work of our dedicated creative and technical teams.
“We welcome this positive outcome, which follows the decisive action we took to ensure the preservation of Aristocrat’s valuable IP assets.”
As part of the settlement, Tran acknowledged that he copied a substantial volume of Aristocrat’s sensitive and valuable intellectual property, including trade secrets, onto a USB stick shortly before his resignation in December 2023.
According to US legal filings, this cache of documents comprised over 6,800 files.
Tran claimed during his notice period he took steps to delete the material.
During this time, he had entered into an employment agreement to work with Aristocrat’s competitor Light & Wonder, following the expiration of his non-compete arrangements.
Tran has now agreed to pay financial compensation to Aristocrat in acknowledgement of his actions and the potential risk to the company’s business interests.
The provider said it will always robustly defend and enforce its intellectual property rights.
Aristocrat defends IP claims
The settlement of the Australian legal dispute follows a similar dispute in the US in which Aristocrat has made IP infringement claims regarding Light & Wonder’s Dragon Train game.
Aristocrat first entered into legal proceedings against Light & Wonder in February, alleging the business copied aspects of the underlying math of its own Dragon Link offering after poaching several of its employees.
The Nasdaq-listed online and land-based gaming supplier saw a large hit to its share price after Aristocrat secured its injunction, despite the company reiterating its FY 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance.
In a rare video statement, CEO Matt Wilson told investors the company intended to build a new legally compliant version of the game without the underlying mathematical framework that is the centre of the dispute.
Light & Wonder also confirmed the game’s lead designer Emma Charles, also a former Aristocrat employee, had been fired.
Wilson said at the time: “This is an isolated incident that we are mitigating effectively, the team’s galvanised, and they’re excited about G2E next week.
“We’re going to bring the best lineup the industry’s ever seen. We’re going to also continue the momentum that you’ve seen at Light & Wonder over the last five years.”