A court in Brazil’s Pernambuco state has dismissed all of Spribe’s claims against NSX Brasil S.A., the operator behind the Betnacional brand, in their dispute over the AVIATOR crash game. The court found no trademark infringement, no copyright infringement and no unfair competition by NSX.
The decision is the second setback for Spribe in the Pernambuco courts in just over two months, and it closes the case in which Spribe won an interim injunction in April.
What Spribe claimed
Spribe went after NSX on three grounds. It argued that Betnacional’s use of the AVIATOR name breached its Brazilian trademark, that the crash game on the platform reproduced protected elements of its own title, and that the conduct amounted to unfair competition.
According to Spribe, Betnacional had been an authorised Aviator licensee since 2022. The dispute started when Betnacional began offering a crash-style game attributed to a separate provider, Aviator Studio, which Spribe said was an unauthorised reproduction of its product.
The Pernambuco court rejected each of the three claims. The full reasoning, the judge’s name and the date of the judgment were not included in the announcements circulated on 18 September, and it is not yet clear whether Spribe intends to appeal.
From injunction to dismissal
In April, the Court of Justice of Pernambuco (TJPE) granted Spribe an interim injunction against Betnacional, ordering NSX to stop using the AVIATOR mark and any identical or confusingly similar visual, graphic or audiovisual elements, under threat of daily fines.
At the time, Spribe founder David Natroshvili said the company would “continue to take all necessary steps globally to protect” its intellectual property.
That order did not last. In July, the same court revoked the injunction after the Federal Court in Brasília provisionally suspended the legal effects of Spribe’s AVIATOR registration with the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (INPI). The Brasília court also told Spribe to stop claiming exclusivity over the name on the basis of that registration until a federal invalidation proceeding is decided.
Judge Andrea Epaminondas Tenorio de Brito ruled in July that the basis for the original order no longer held, citing Article 296 of Brazil’s Code of Civil Procedure, which allows interim relief to be lifted when the conditions behind it change. The dismissal of Spribe’s claims on the merits now follows that revocation.
The Georgian trademark question
The federal challenge was brought by Aviator Studio Brasil, which argues the Aviator brand was in use before Spribe registered it in Brazil. In the July revocation, the Pernambuco court accepted evidence that the Aviator trademark originated in Georgia in 2016 and was registered there in 2018. It also took into account earlier Georgian court rulings that invalidated Spribe’s registration of the mark in that country.
The federal invalidation case in Brasília remains the central proceeding. If the INPI registration is cancelled, Spribe loses the legal footing for trademark actions against any Brazilian operator using the AVIATOR name.
A record split by jurisdiction
Spribe has lost most of its recent rounds in Brazil. In May, first-instance and appellate courts in São Paulo rejected Spribe’s requests for urgent measures against Aviator Studio, allowing the rival game to keep operating while the trademark dispute runs.
Outside Brazil, the picture is different. Days after the São Paulo decisions, a UK court ruled in Spribe’s favour in a related Aviator copyright case.
The developer has also faced regulatory pressure in Brazil. In June, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Federal District and Territories opened an inquiry into alleged misleading advertising by Spribe, including a claimed gap between Aviator’s advertised and actual return to player (RTP). The office recommended that the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) suspend the technical certification of Spribe’s games, a step that would remove Aviator from every licensed operator in the country.
Why the case matters to operators
Aviator is carried by dozens of operators in Brazil, a market that has operated under a federal licensing regime since January 2025. Control of the AVIATOR name decides who can license the game in Brazil and who can be forced to take a version of it down.
For operators carrying either Spribe’s title or Aviator Studio’s, the Pernambuco dismissal removes one immediate legal risk. It does not settle the ownership question.
What happens next
Spribe can still appeal the Pernambuco judgment, and the São Paulo litigation against Aviator Studio is ongoing. The decisive ruling is expected from the federal invalidation proceeding in Brasília, which will determine whether Spribe’s Brazilian AVIATOR registration survives. It is also unclear whether the SPA will act on the prosecutors’ recommendation on certification, a decision that would affect Aviator’s availability regardless of how the trademark cases end.
Source: Court of Justice of Pernambuco
