News

By Blake Brittain

Feb 9 (Reuters) - A jury in San Jose, California, on Friday awarded mobile-gaming platform maker Skillz SKLZ.N nearly $42.9 million from rival AviaGames after a week-long patent infringement trial.

The jury agreed with Skillz that AviaGames had infringed one of its patents willfully, which could lead the presiding judge to multiply the damages by up to three times the initial award.

Skillz's general counsel Andrew Dahlinghaus called the verdict a "step in the right direction to promoting fairness in our industry." Attorneys for AviaGames did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict.

Skillz's platform enables multiplayer competitions in mobile gaming. It sued AviaGames for patent infringement in 2021, alleging that AviaGames' Pocket7Games app was a "copycat" of its platform with "knockoff" versions of its games.

The lawsuit said that AviaGames stole its technology after launching a failed game on Skillz's platform in 2016. A Skillz attorney said during opening statements at the trial last week that AviaGames copied the technology as part of a "plan to kill Skillz," according to a court transcript.

AviaGames denied the allegations. Its attorney had told the jury that its technology works differently than Skillz's, and that Skillz, "a direct competitor, doesn't like our success."

Las Vegas-based Skillz told the court last year that it had separately uncovered evidence that AviaGames used bots to "rig" its cash games. AviaGames, which has denied the claims, later received a grand-jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey over the allegations and has been hit with a related class-action lawsuit in California.

Skillz and another mobile-gaming company, Big Run Studios, have also sued AviaGames for copyright infringement in a pending case in Northern California.

The case is Skillz Platform Inc v. AviaGames Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:21-cv-02436.

For Skillz: Lazar Raynal, Chris Campbell, Jessica Benvenisty and Matthew Wood of King & Spalding

For AviaGames: Jerry Riedinger, Nathan Sabri and Wendy Wang of Perkins Coie; Ajay Krishnan of Keker Van Nest & Peters

Read more:

US judge delays mobile gambling patent trial for criminal investigation

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)

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