Aristocrat Technologies, Australia’s poker machine manufacturing giant, is suing rival poker machine supplier, Ainsworth Game Technology for stealing and copying the design of its most successful gaming slot machine. Aristocrat has filed a lawsuit in Australia’s Federal Court claiming a breach of Intellectual Property Law, in regards to its Lightning Link Machine. This gaming machine is installed in the casinos all around the globe and has even won the Land-based product award at the Global Gaming Awards held last year.
Aristocrat has claimed that Ainsworth has stolen the technology developed for Lightning Link, and used it in one of its own machines. The poker machine maker also stated that this case has gone well past the straightforward Copyright Infringement and concerned charges of extensive and intentional misappropriation of confidential information, Intellectual Property (IP), and trade secrets. He further mentioned that maintaining suitable standards and benchmarks is a vital part of guaranteeing ongoing trust in their business and industry, and plays a significant role in their high compliance culture. In response, Ainsworth said in a statement that they would be vigorously defending the claims put forward by Aristocrat in all the proceedings.
The issue between these two Australian poker machine suppliers started a year ago when Aristocrat took legal action against Ainsworth by demanding them to release the documents to discover how they developed one of their new machines, known as Jackpot Strike. The claim demanded Ainsworth reveal all the source code, mathematical tables, game rules, artwork, and commercial documents related to the new machine.