Aristocrat settles with former employee involved in Light & Wonder legal case
Aristocrat has settled its dispute with its former employee Dinh Toan Tran after he allegedly stole 6,800 sensitive files and joined supplier rival Light & Wonder.
The move comes weeks after the supplier won a preliminary court case which alleged Light & Wonder’s Dragon Train, which launched in March 2024 in the UK, was created using the Australia-based firm’s IP from its Dragon Link title which first debuted in 2017.
As per an Aristocrat statement, Tran acknowledged that before resigning in December 2023 he copied a “substantial volume” of sensitive and valuable IP, such as trade secrets, onto an external USB.
According to court documents, Tran downloaded over 6,800 files.
Aristocrat filed an urgent ex parte application in January 2024 and obtained injunctions as well as search and seizure orders against Tran to protect the supplier’s IP.
Though Tran claims he took steps to delete the information while serving his notice period, around that same time he had agreed to join Light & Wonder once his non-compete clause had expired.
Upon reaching a settlement with Aristocrat, Tran has since acknowledged how his actions placed Aristocrat’s business interests at risk.
He has also agreed to pay financial compensation to his former employer.
Aristocrat CEO and managing director Trevor Croker commented on the settlement, noting how the firm will always protect its work.
Croker said: “Aristocrat is an ideas and innovation company at heart.
“Our intellectual property is therefore vital to our ongoing success, and we are committed to protecting the great work of our dedicated creative and technical teams.
“We welcome this positive outcome, which follows the decisive action we took to ensure the preservation of Aristocrat’s valuable IP assets.”
Light & Wonder CEO Matt Wilson revealed at the start of October that the firm had dismissed the Dragon Train designer and that the game had been removed from the Australian and North American markets.