On August 20, the Court of First Instance in the country of Georgia ruled in favor of Aviator’s copyright and trademark infringement claim against the gaming company Spribe and Adjarabet, Georgia’s largest online casino which is owned by the UK-based company Flutter Entertainment.
The court ruling found copyright and trademark infringement and invalidated trademark registrations based on bad faith registration and copyright infringement, awarding the claimant damages in the amount of $330m.
“We are pleased with the outcome of the court’s ruling on this claim, and we will continue to aggressively protect our client’s intellectual property from unlicensed use on any international gaming platforms,” said Nikoloz Gogilidze, Managing Partner of the law firm Mikadze Gegetchkori Taktakishvili LLC, which represents Aviator.
Aviator owns several trademark registrations for the graphic logo “Aviator” for gambling services including online and physical casino services and gambling. The image and brand name “Aviator” has been used by Spribe OÜ in its flagship game which was offered by the online gambling platform adjarabet in Georgia. In 2021-2022, Spribe OÜ registered its own Aviator trademarks for computer games and gambling services, which the claimant argued were infringing on their original trademark.
Aviator filed a lawsuit against Spribe claiming invalidation of the trademarks based on two grounds: 1) trademarks were registered in bad faith as SPRIBE OU knew about the existence of claimant’s rights and at the same time was using claimant’s image and trademark for its crash game; and 2) trademark registrations infringed claimant’s copyright on the above mentioned image.
In the same lawsuit, Aviator requested to prevent online gambling platform adjarabet from using the name Aviator as well as the image belonging to the claimant and asked for damages for prior illegal use.
On August 20, 2024, the Court of First Instance delivered its decision and satisfied all the claims of the claimant. Namely, the court ruled that trademarks of Spribe OÜ were registered in bad faith, and secondly, that the trademarks of Spribe OÜ infringed copyright on the claimant’s image. With this ruling, the court has invalidated the challenged trademark registrations on the abovementioned grounds.
As for the claim against online gambling platform adjarabet the court ruled in favor of the claimant, ordered the platform to stop the use of the name Aviator for its flagship game and online streaming of the casino games. The court has awarded Aviator US$330,000,000 in compensation for trademark and copyright infringement for prior illegal use.
