SPRIBE procedural boost as UK court weighs Aviator dispute

SPRIBE has secured another win in the long-running dispute with Aviator LLC, after a UK High Court judge ruled that parts of the case must be assessed through foreign law rather than English law alone. The decision is procedural, but it matters because it blocks Aviator LLC’s attempt to narrow the dispute and fast-track the ownership question in its favour.

Deputy judge Michael Tappin KC said earlier Georgian judgments could not simply be ignored, given that the claims extend across multiple Berne Convention territories. Ownership and infringement were left for a full trial, so this is not a final ruling on who owns Aviator.

For SPRIBE, the fact that the court refused to isolate the dispute as a purely English-law issue is important. It keeps the broader international context alive, which is important in a case built around intellectual property claims that stretch beyond one jurisdiction.

For Aviator LLC, the ruling is a setback because its attempt to control the structure of the case did not land. Still, the court stopped short of saying SPRIBE owns the rights, so the core dispute remains open.

How this links to earlier cases

This latest development follows SPRIBE’s earlier UK injunction victory against Aviator LLC. In that instance,  the High Court had blocked Aviator LLC from launching or promoting a competing crash game in the UK. It also sits alongside SPRIBE’s interim injunction against Betnacional in Brazil, where a Pernambuco court ordered the operator to stop using the Aviator trademark and similar brand elements, only to be rejected in another ruling a few weeks later.