Aristocrat Leisure Limited announced today that it has settled its dispute with former long-term employee, Mr Dinh Toan Tran, on favourable terms.
Mr Tran has acknowledged that shortly before his resignation in December 2023, he copied a substantial volume of Aristocrat’s sensitive and valuable intellectual property, including trade secrets, onto external USB storage devices. Mr Tran’s position is that, following his resignation, during his notice period he took steps to delete that material. At that time, Mr Tran had agreed to enter into employment with a competitor of Aristocrat, following the expiration of his non-compete arrangements.
In January 2024, Aristocrat filed an urgent ex parte application in the Federal Court of Australia, obtaining injunctions and search and seizure orders against Mr Tran, to protect Aristocrat’s intellectual property.
Mr Tran has provided Court enforceable undertakings. In acknowledgment of his actions and the potential risk to Aristocrat’s business interests, Mr Tran has agreed to pay financial compensation to Aristocrat.
Aristocrat will always robustly defend and enforce its intellectual property rights.
Aristocrat CEO and Managing Director, Trevor Croker said: “Aristocrat is an ideas and innovation company at heart. Our intellectual property is therefore vital to our ongoing success, and we are committed to protecting the great work of our dedicated creative and technical teams. We welcome this positive outcome, which follows the decisive action we took to ensure the preservation of Aristocrat’s valuable IP assets.”
Further information:
Peter Brookes
Senior Managing Director
Mobile: (61) 407 911 389
peter.brookes@sodali.com
