Light & Wonder’s Dragon Train slot machine series will be allowed to remain on Australian gaming floors after the Federal Court of Australia denied a request from rival Aristocrat Leisure Ltd for an interlocutory injunction.
Justice Stephen Burley issued the order last Friday 7 February, noting that Aristocrat’s application had been refused, although his order also included a stipulation that the reasons for judgement may not be disclosed or published until further order.
Nevertheless, Benchmark Company analyst Mike Hickey commented that the ruling “has alleviated concerns that the litigation might affect previously sold games in the Australian market.” He also noted that the decision means Light & Wonder’s customers will not be required to take any action in relation to their gaming floors, allowing the global gaming giant to instead focus on its 2025 content pipeline. It is understood that there are around 10,000 units of Dragon Train currently installed nationwide.
The ruling is in contrast to that of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, which in September granted Aristocrat a preliminary injunction relating to the “Dragon Train” series after finding it “extremely likely to succeed in demonstrating Light & Wonder misappropriated Aristocrat’s trade secrets in development of Dragon Train”.
That decision temporarily prohibited Light & Wonder from the continued or planned sale, leasing or other commercialization of Dragon Train across the United States.
The case, first filed last March, relates to allegations by Aristocrat that Dragon Train bears an uncanny similarity to its own Dragon Link series. Aristocrat accused Light & Wonder of misappropriating its intellectual property, imitating copyrighted audio-visual elements, copying game mechanics and gameplay, copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices, and questioned the significant number of former Aristocrat executives in senior leadership roles at Light & Wonder – specifically the role played by two former Aristocrat designers in developing Dragon Train.
Light & Wonder revealed shortly after the US injunction that it was working on a new version of the game, dubbed Dragon Train 2.0, which would address the specific IP concerns of the Nevada court.
Light & Wonder’s NASDAQ-listed shares jumped by around 11% on Monday, and its ASX-listed shares by 7.5%, in response to the company’s legal win.
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