One Malta court, all 27 EU states: Spribe gets EU-wide injunction against Aviator Studio

On 1 September 2026 the First Hall of the Civil Court of Malta issued an ex parte provisional injunction ordering Aviator Studio Limited, Aviator Studio Holding Limited and Aviator Studio USA Limited to stop using signs identical or similar to Spribe’s EU trademarks — including on the aviator.studio website — with effect across the entire European Union. Spribe’s release names the legal basis: Malta’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Act, applied to two EU trademark registrations.

Why one Maltese court binds 27 markets

The order rests on EU trademarks no. 018817594 — the figurative mark combining the word “Aviator” with the aircraft device — and no. 018825078, a multimedia mark covering the audiovisual elements of the game itself. Because an EU trademark is a unitary right, a national court sitting as an EU trademark court can grant relief that operates in every member state. Spribe filed in one forum and obtained an injunction covering all of them.

The multimedia registration is the underrated move. Crash-game copycats rarely copy a logo pixel for pixel; they copy the experience — the climbing plane, the multiplier, the crash. A registered multimedia mark let the court compare the actual in-game sequence, not just static branding.

What persuaded the court

According to NEXT.io’s report on the order, the court found a prima facie likelihood of confusion on three grounds: the identical “Aviator” name, the similarity of the aircraft imagery and audiovisual sequence, and the shared audience of online gaming customers. It cited concrete market evidence — both games surfacing side by side in searches on Betsson and EuroCasino, and a LuckyStreak listing that attributed Spribe’s game to Aviator Studio.

The court also noted that Aviator Studio had recently obtained a B2B Critical Supply Licence from the Malta Gaming Authority — positioning it to scale distribution across the EU. A regulatory licence, in other words, is not an IP clearance, and the court treated it as a reason to act faster, not slower.

The order is provisional: the Aviator Studio companies may seek review, and Spribe must commence proceedings on the merits within 31 calendar days of the order.

The campaign, not the battle

The Malta order is one front in a multi-jurisdiction war. Spribe lost on home turf — Georgian courts, up to the Supreme Court in 2025, found its Georgian registrations were filed in bad faith against Aviator LLC’s copyright claim. It then rebuilt the fight where its portfolio is strong: an interim injunction from the UK High Court in July 2025, a procedural win in London in May 2026 on which law governs the Georgian judgments, cancellation of two rival trademark registrations in Curaçao in August, and now the EU-wide order — with a multi-territorial preliminary injunction hearing scheduled in the UK for October.

What this means for you

If a copycat is trading on your product’s identity in Europe, the Spribe playbook is the current state of the art. An EU trademark portfolio — including non-traditional marks that capture how your product looks and sounds in motion, not just its name — converts one court filing into 27-state relief, on an ex parte timeline measured in weeks. And evidence of real-world confusion (aggregator listings, side-by-side search results, misattributed lobby entries) is what moves a court to act provisionally, so collecting it should start the day you spot the clone.

The reverse lesson stands too: registrations are jurisdictional assets. Spribe’s Georgian defeat did not decide the war, because rights in each forum stand or fall on their own filings. Where your registrations are thin, your enforcement is thin.

Counsel’s note. Most brands facing a copycat game or product sue where the copycat lives, discover the forum is slow or hostile, and stall. The working method is Spribe’s: register where you enforce — including multimedia and figurative marks that cover the experience being cloned — then pick the forum whose procedure concentrates the most force per filing. In the EU that is any EU trademark court with ex parte provisional powers; one order covers the single market. For the infrastructure side of the same fight — the clone sites, mirrors and app listings that distribute the copycat — we broke the method down in our guide to taking down casino clone websites.