A New Jersey court has lifted confidentiality protection from the Spectrum Gaming Group report at the centre of Black Cube’s defamation case against Evolution, part of a 20 August ruling that also cleared three expert witnesses for deposition.
The ruling came from Robert Kugler, the retired federal judge appointed as special adjudicator to resolve discovery in the case. Judge John Porto is presiding. The order splits the outcome between the two sides, granting Black Cube’s motion on the Spectrum document while refusing two of Evolution’s requests.
What the 20 August order does
Kugler granted the motion to lift confidentiality from the Spectrum report, a document that has been contested in earlier rounds of discovery. Black Cube previously secured an order requiring Evolution to produce the report along with material it sent to Spectrum and to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), including meeting files and transcripts.
He also ordered depositions of three expert witnesses: Nelson Rose, Joshua Skule and Ricardo Solano. Each session is capped at four hours, and the witnesses may appear remotely if they ask to.
Two Evolution requests were refused. Kugler declined to order production of audio and video recordings, and declined to override legal privilege covering communications between Black Cube and its attorneys.
The UKGC settlement and what it proves
The immediate fight is over how far the record should stretch before trial, and the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has become the reason.
Evolution agreed a £4.75m regulatory settlement with the UKGC in July. The Commission found that Evolution games appeared on six sites operated by two unlicensed operators targeting British players, and attributed the breaches to policy failures at the supplier. It did not find a wider pattern across the UK market.
Black Cube cited that settlement in a 3 August filing, arguing that Evolution had been misleading the court about its dealings with regulators, and pointing to the Commission’s view that the breaches were serious enough to warrant considering licence suspension. Black Cube has argued the outcome supports parts of its earlier report.
Evolution disputes the connection on dates. The UKGC review covered activity between April 2024 and January 2025, years after the Black Cube report was written in November 2021. On Evolution’s reading, a 2026 settlement about 2024 and 2025 conduct cannot retrospectively validate allegations about a different period.
Evolution has also called the latest discovery request disproportionate and a source of further delay in a case now close to a scheduled hearing. Its lawyer Michael Williams put it directly in the opposition filing:
This snowballing request serves no proper end and identifies no inconsistency.
How the case got here
The dispute traces back to a November 2021 report by Black Cube, the Israeli private intelligence firm, which alleged that Evolution games were reaching players in prohibited markets. Court filings later established that Playtech, a rival supplier, commissioned the work. That disclosure changed the character of the litigation, turning a fight about the accuracy of the allegations into one that also covers who paid for them and what Evolution told regulators afterwards.
Black Cube is the plaintiff. Evolution is the defendant, and the case is scheduled for a hearing in November under the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), New Jersey’s anti-SLAPP statute. UPEPA lets a defendant in a claim arising from protected public expression seek early dismissal, and it restricts discovery while that motion is live. That is the structural tension running through every discovery ruling in the case: each order that widens the record is time and material added before a motion that could end the case outright.
Next steps
The court is due to hear argument by Zoom on 1 September on Black Cube’s request for broader discovery. Evolution will oppose it.
What Kugler decides there sets the size of the record going into November. A grant pulls more of Evolution’s regulatory correspondence into a case already carrying a lifted confidentiality order on the Spectrum report. A denial leaves the UPEPA motion to be argued on the material already produced. The Spectrum report itself, now free of confidentiality restriction, is the document most likely to be read outside the courtroom.
Source: Superior Court of New Jersey
