Over the last 12 months there has been a raging battle in the US over IP rights in slots games. In February 2024, Aristocrat filed a lawsuit in the Nevada courts, accusing Light & Wonder (L&W) of misappropriating trade secrets and infringing on copyrights and trade dress associated with its successful Dragon Link and Lightning Link slots.
The primary focus is on L&W’s Dragon Train game, which Aristocrat claims closely imitates its own products in terms of game mechanics, audiovisual elements and overall design. The lawsuit also highlights the involvement of former Aristocrat employees, who allegedly used proprietary knowledge when developing L&W’s competing games.
In September 2024, a US judge granted a preliminary injunction in favour of Aristocrat, ordering L&W to cease the sale and distribution of Dragon Train. The court found that Aristocrat was “extremely likely to succeed” in proving that L&W had misappropriated its trade secrets. Following the ruling, L&W began removing approximately 2,200 Dragon Train units from casino floors.
Very recently, Aristocrat amended its complaint to include additional L&W titles Jewel of the Dragon and Dragon Unleashed Link, alleging similar infringements. In response, L&W voluntarily withdrew Jewel of the Dragon from the market.
L&W has since said it intends to appeal the preliminary injunction and continues to develop revised versions of its games that comply with the court’s directives. The company maintains the disputed titles constitute a minor portion of its overall portfolio.
The devil is very much in the detail in these types of cases, so I will not comment on the ongoing litigation because it would be foolish to express views in ignorance. However, I have been involved in a number of similar battles over the years for gaming operators (e.g., Cantor Gaming versus GameAccount Gaming, where we won for Cantor Gaming on a very a close call; and more recently AlchemyBet versus Trinitas Gaming and Os, where last year we achieved a summary judgment on infringement before the rest of the case settled).
Such cases are usually fought with passion and not a little risk.
On the one hand, taking the look and feel and even the game mathematics from someone’s most successful game, strikes at the heart of their business, and is the kind of issue of principle that needs to be dealt with. On the other hand, proving infringement is a lot harder than just telling a judge: “These games are too close”, particularly since so many games have significant format and graphical similarities. Every game house has a five-reel slot with (9/10/J/Q/K) and every range of games will have a Wild West theme, an Ancient Egyptian theme and, of course, the ubiquitous ‘bass fishing’ variant. So, it feels wrong that any single party should claim exclusive rights.
At the same time, we all know that a few games and formats have achieved a notoriety which makes them very distinctive, very valuable economically and ultimately much copied. Take Rainbow Riches or Gonzo’s Quest as examples, or the Slingo format. There is something about these games that make them distinctive and popular. So, is imitation permissible, and at what point does such imitation become parasitic and an invasion of legal rights?
Back to basics
“What intellectual property exists in a game? And what are the tests for infringement?”
The first major issue is to understand what IP rights are available. The legal tests differ considerably between different jurisdictions. To give a simple example, certain jurisdictions (the US being a good example) take the view that the scope of patentability extends to ‘anything under the sun’, and so a game that has an inventive concept might be patentable, thereby creating a statutory monopoly. The position in Europe is somewhat less favourable, because the law generally prohibits patents on ‘methods of playing a game’, so be careful if someone alleges that they have a patent, still less a ‘worldwide patent’ (whatever that is) for a game. Certain operators have sought protection for game rules, the arrangement of cards on a baize table and so on, but generally patents for games are fraught with difficulty.
A more promising avenue is copyright which can apply to protect visual images within games, structural matters such as the arrangement of pay tables and, of course, computer code. But copyright has its own limitations. In the first place, it only ever protects ‘copying’ – something similar or identical which was created independently will not infringe. Second, in the world of games, there are so many similar themes and different versions available in the public domain that it is often hard to show that any copying was from the claimant’s work. So, copying has to be at a level of specificity for the court to judge that it is a misappropriation of the skill and labour of the original authors, and not simply another variant of a common theme.
When it comes to game formats, the law has historically been quite harsh, refusing game show formats the protection of copyright. However, I suspect that nowadays, given the considerable sums spent on licensing rights TV formats, courts today might take a more generous view.
Of course, the most solid cases are those where employees have moved company and can be shown to have taken the actual source code or algorithms of the game engine. To be sure, programmers often feel entitled to code they have written, irrespective of the legal niceties. Aristocrat’s lawsuit focused on an employee move, as have some of my own cases. There are still many challenges in such cases, but at least they carry the potential for forensic fingerprints of copying within the code itself.
Last, let’s not forget trademarks and registered designs – some of the most powerful but least mentioned of rights. After all, a graphical design, a word, logo or even a sound can be granted effective protection, yet gambling companies are strangely reticent to use these forms of protection to secure economic advantage.
In the headlong rush to produce a number of each new titles per year, gaming houses are frequently tripping over themselves to develop and deploy new games. But enforcement threats remain relatively rare.
With the difference between a killer release and another ‘also ran’ being measured in millions, gaming operators would be wise to consider more protection for their key assets, while also understanding that the legal protection of game formats and features presents significant legal challenges.
Carl Rohsler is a partner at Keystone Law, specialising in intellectual property litigation and gambling regulation.
The post Whose IP is it anyway? A legal perspective on copyright in slots games first appeared on EGR Intel.
Keystone Law’s Carl Rohsler gives his thoughts on the complicated nature of IP rights in the gaming industry, and why protection of assets is of paramount importance
The post Whose IP is it anyway? A legal perspective on copyright in slots games first appeared on EGR Intel.