Australia’s largest pokies company has taken a games design director to court over thousands of files it alleges he downloaded from company servers.
Aristocrat launched legal action against Dinh Toan Tran with a search order made in the Federal Court on Tuesday.
It sought the recovery of more than 6800 files allegedly downloaded from company servers in December.
Tran’s LinkedIn profile lists himself as the principal director of game design and head of design and development at Aristocrat.
He has been restrained from destroying or deleting any documents in his possession that are the company’s proprietary material while an independent lawyer and computer expert complete their analyses.
A western Sydney property was searched this week with devices including laptops, external storage devices and tablets being seized after Tran was ordered to disclose their whereabouts and provide login credentials.
One relevant USB storage device was “the focus of the investigation,” Aristocrat’s barrister John Hennessy SC told the court during a case management hearing on Thursday.
Tran’s lawyer Ken Brotherson said the search orders were made without the presence of his client.
Federal Court Justice Yaseen Shariff said he understood the complaint but the company had the right to investigate what it did not know after forming a “perception”, whether eventually right or wrong, about the documents’ download.
“It seems to me everything has been done extremely professionally,” he said.
However, with thousands of files across several exhibits, analysis could take some time, the judge said.
The case is due to return to court in February.
