Buffalo IP: Aristocrat takes other games providers to court to protect Buffalo branding

Aristocrat Leisure

Australian slot machine manufacturer, Aristocrat Leisure, is taking four gaming companies to court in the UK, claiming they have caused Aristocrat to lose reputation, goodwill sales and revenue by copying the group’s Buffalo online slot machines. 

The group, which has operated in the UK for 30 years now, has a history of protecting its intellectual property in the courts.

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However, the Pragmatic Play-linked groups have said that the use of buffalo logos, images and fonts is widespread among American Wild West-themed games and, therefore, there was no encroachment on the Buffalo series of games that Aristocrat first launched in 2007. 

Further, the defendants have also asked for the Buffalo trademark, registered in 2023, to be invalidated.

Aristocrat was founded in Australia in 1953, and launched their first Buffalo-themed game in 2007. The physical slot machine became so popular that the group states there were 16,000 instances of it in Australia and a further 42,000 in the US. 

Its popularity was driven, in part, by its low-stakes requirements. Buffalo slot machines were some of the first to accept penny bets on credit cards. 

Due to its popularity, Aristocrat enlisted its British counterpart, Product Madness, to create online versions of the game. 

In 2016, Product Madness made these games available via its three online apps which attracted 2.8 million Facebook followers and 800,000 player accounts.

The games retained the low-roller reputation of the originals, which helped them become popular online. 

Aristocrat claims that the popularity of its games led to the defendants attempting to ride on the coattails of the original games. However, the defendants countered that the use of buffalos, including the term and any associated imagery, is widespread in wild-west-themed games and that they were not related to Aristocrat’s games. 

Aristocrat had also claimed there were other distinct similarities between the defendant’s games and their own. This included the use of eagles, wolves and elks. 

The defendants claim that the similarities are not distinctive. The group has gone on to say that the filing of the Buffalo trademark, by the plaintiff, attempts to prevent lawful activity and has asked for the filing to be invalidated. 

In 2024, Aristocrat took action against a former employee, game designer Dinh Toan Tran. 

The courts agreed that Tran had copied substantial intellectual property onto a USB before leaving the organisation. He used this information to help create the Dragon Train slot machine for Light & Wonder. 

Following the court’s order to cease operations of the physical machines, Light & Wonder announced that it would work on Dragon Train 2.0 as the court found that the machines only infringed on the maths behind the game. 

In 2019, Aristocrat also took competing Australian slot machine maker Ainsworth Game Technology to court, accusing them of stealing the technology behind their Lightning Link machine. 

Aristocrat effectively accused former founder Len Ainsworth of taking the intellectual property over from Aristocrat to Ainsworth when he established the new company. The case was settled two years later.