In new court filings, Aristocrat is alleging that Light & Wonder is not complying with a court injunction that, among other things, took the gaming company’s Dragon Train game offline.
In a Nevada District Court filing this week, Aristocrat is petitioning the court to compel Light & Wonder to provide documents in the discovery process that the company claims fall outside of the scope of Judge Gloria Navarro’s order.
“Light & Wonder has made little effort to comply with the Order’s requirements to search for documents reflecting Aristocrat’s trade secrets, and to identify every instance in which Light & Wonder has disclosed those trade secrets, outside the context of Dragon Train. To make matters worse, Light & Wonder did not make a reasonable effort to identify which documents and disclosures actually reflect Aristocrat’s trade secrets,” the filing read.
Light & Wonder has taken material steps to address the issues in the initial complaint, which allege that the company hired former Aristocrat engineer Emma Charles and that she brought over Aristocrat trade secrets she learned when developing Dragon Link for the company. Those secrets were then used to develop and launch Dragon Train.
Light & Wonder has since dismissed Charles from the company, but Aristocrat suggests that Charles potentially brought up these trade secrets in regards to other game titles besides Dragon Link. Additionally, Aristocrat argues that it is common practice for game developers to export part or all of the math around a successful title to other titles, therefore it is well within bounds for the group to seek work product beyond just Dragon Train.
Currently, Light & Wonder has only provided Aristocrat with results on search terms “Dragon Link”, “Lightning Link” and “Golden Century” to source documents for the suit, but Aristocrat contends these terms are not sufficient.
Light & Wonder did ask the court for an extension in order to fully come in compliance with the preliminary injunction, but for reasons different than what Aristocrat is alleging. Rather, it asked for a two-week extension to fully remove Dragon Train math from its technological systems, as it took longer than planned to take that information offline from employees. That extension was granted in October.
