Light & Wonder has earned a much-needed win in its ongoing legal battle with Aristocrat linked to its Dragon Train series, with the US District Court for the District of Nevada that the company does not need to disclose the math models behind its Hold N’ Spin game titles and that Aristocrat must detail any trade secrets it is looking to protect.
The court also ordered the two companies to meet and discuss its latest decision ahead of a trial scheduled to take place in 2026.
The decision sparked a jump in Light & Wonder’s share price, with multiple media outlets reporting that the company’s US-based stocks had surged by around 9.5% in afternoon trading. Shares on the ASX – Light & Wonder’s secondary listing – were up almost 13.5% at Wednesday close.
In a note, Jefferies analyst David Katz described the ongoing litigation as “background noise” for Light & Wonder and “beside the key point of our [positive] thesis.”
He also pointed out that IP lawsuits within the supplier sector are commonplace, although this particular case is “a bit more than another day at the office.
“The matter turned out to be somewhat larger than Light & Wonder originally indicated,” he said, however “competition between the two companies is intense, given their positioning as the only two large-scale game developers globally and the number of people at Light & Wonder that were formerly at Aristocrat.”
This latest development comes after Light & Wonder recently revealed that it had completed a review of all its Hold & Spin games released since 2015 to determine whether any presented issues with respect to Aristocrat math values similar to those identified in Dragon Train and Jewel of the Dragon, with no evidence found that Aristocrat math values were used in any of these games.
The US District Court of Nevada last year granted Aristocrat a preliminary injunction relating to Light & Wonder’s “Dragon Train” series, ruling that Aristocrat was “extremely likely to succeed in demonstrating Light & Wonder misappropriated Aristocrat’s trade secrets in development of Dragon Train”.
Light & Wonder also revealed in April of this year that it would stop commercializing Jewel of the Dragon and that another unreleased game would not be put to market due to similar concerns over the IP.
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