Scientific Games to challenge court-slapped penalty

A Chicago court has slapped a $315m (€246.8m/€275.3m) on Scientific Games, a US-based gambling technology provider. The company has said that it would challenge the court order in higher courts.

The jury in the Chicago court deemed that the Scientific Games must pay damaged amounting to $105m to a group of three companies –Shuffle Tech International, Aces Up Gaming and Poydras-Talrick Holdings – but the damages were automatically tripled under US antitrust law.

Shuffle Tech is due to receive $135m, Poydras-Talrick is due $75m, Aces Up was awarded $45m and Shuffle Tech, as an assignee of DigiDeal Corp, is due to receive $60m.

The court decided that Scientific Games had started a frivolous patent lawsuit with the objective of gaining control of the market for automatic card-shufflers at casinos.

“The company believes the jury reached the wrong result and will seek review of both the finding of liability and the damages award both before the trial court and if necessary on appeal,” Scientific Games spokeswoman Susan Cartwright said.

The group of companies collaborated to create an automatic card shuffler in 2012, but Scientific Games filed a lawsuit to allege that the rival product had used patented technology without authorisation.

Shuffle Tech, Aces Up, and Poydras-Talrick hit back with an antitrust lawsuit in 2015 by claiming that Scientific Games had obtained patents that were too broad – and therefore invalid – by misleading the US Patent and Trademark Office. The trio also accused Scientific Games of having engaged in “sham patent litigation against any competitor that dared to market competitive card shufflers.”

Scientific Games had argued in court submissions that it did not intend to mislead the patent office and that its original lawsuit was not frivolous.

In other news, Scientific Games has launched its SG Universe online product suite with Casino Arizona, which operates two properties.

SG Universe has provided Casino Arizona with a desktop website and mobile app, as well as a social casino platform.