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Aristocrat prevailed it in its discovery dispute with rival Light & Wonder, but now has to contend with getting too much of what it asked for. In response, it is now asking a Nevada federal court to extend the pretrial process — already long delayed — even further. The new timeline Aristocrat proposes would push the deadline for the joint pretrial order to July 31, 2026.
Light & Wonder has countered with a shorter proposed extension, but even that would put the trial’s commencement in the second half of the year.
Aristocrat sued Light & Wonder in February 2024 for allegedly copying the math underlying its hit game Dragon Link. Intellectual property disputes in the gaming space are common, but often go nowhere because of how narrowly the protections apply. Because of that, the case largely flew under the radar until last September, when news broke that a preliminary injunction would force Light & Wonder to pull the allegedly infringing game, Dragon Train, off the market.
The proverbial “smoking gun” in the case was a spreadsheet used by mathematician Emma Charles while working on Dragon Train. It proved to be identical, down to the file’s creation date, to one she had produced for Dragon Link in her previous role at Aristocrat.
Dragon Train disappeared from online and retail casino, Charles lost her job, and Light & Wonder’s valuation dropped by over a billion dollars overnight. Since then, the two companies have been locked in an extremely lengthy and technical procedural battle.
It subsequently came out that Dragon Train might not be the only game with stolen math. At issue is how much of the documentation for Light & Wonder’s other games Aristocrat is entitled to inspect.
Having failed to trim Aristocrat’s discovery request, Light & Wonder complied by supplying nearly 20 million pages of documentation.
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A Belated Deluge of Documents
This latest development in the case isn’t uncommon. The discovery phase of major corporate lawsuits is a chess match in its own right. The complainant would like to obtain incriminating evidence and only incriminating evidence. The defense, for its part, would ideally not like to turn over anything that could be used against it. Failing that, however, a common strategy is to provide so much information that it’s hard for the other party’s lawyers to find what they need.
That strategy is colloquially known by the receiving party as a “document dump.”
Although that phrase does not appear in Aristocrat’s petition for an extended deadline, it appears to be what it is accusing Light & Wonder of doing:
After producing nearly 7.5 million pages of documents in the month of September, L&W has produced nearly 11.5 million pages of documents in October and November. The vast majority of these documents appear to be from L&W’s preliminary injunction accountings—i.e., documents reflecting Aristocrat’s trade secrets—and thus may reveal evidence of presently unknown misappropriation that will require time to investigate. Despite several inquiries from Aristocrat, L&W still has not said when its production will be complete. Instead of timely completing this and other discovery that Aristocrat has requested, L&W has resumed its strategy of trying to run out the clock.
The current deadline for discovery elapses on December 15, 2025, and that for the joint pretrial order would be May 15, 2026. Light & Wonder has offered to agree to a seven-week extension, but Aristocrat wants an extra ten weeks. It says its offer to compromise with eight-and-a-half went unanswered by Light & Wonder.
No matter what happens at this point, the trial will have begun well over two years after the case was filed.
Heavy Redactions in Court Filings
Light & Wonder has been filing discovery requests of its own. The parties are also battling over who can be deposed and for how long. Notably, Light & Wonder is seeking to constrain the length and topical breadth of any deposition by its CEO, Matt Wilson. Aristocrat wants to question him for up to seven hours, with fewer restrictions on the questions it can ask.
Aristocrat’s goal in that regard appears to be to challenge what it calls Light & Wonder’s “rogue employee” defense.
Based on recent court filings, there’s a lot going behind the scenes. However, both companies agree that many of the facts of the case concern extremely sensitive, confidential information. Some of the most seemingly important parts of the documents have therefore been redacted.
For instance:
As discovery has progressed, the case has become even more complex, as Aristocrat has recently received evidence that [four lines redacted].
The number of tainted L&W games may only grow following the completion of the discovery compelled by the Court’s October 17 Order. Given the complexity—and expansion—of the case, it is not surprising that more time is needed to complete discovery.
However, the unredacted portions provide hints of what directions the trial might take. For instance, Aristocrat references another game mathematician who allegedly accessed its math. The name is redacted, but the use of male pronouns makes it clear that Aristocrat isn’t just referring to Charles.
