Spribe Loses Brazilian Injunction as Federal Court Pulls the Rug on Aviator Trademark

Key Points

• The Pernambuco Court of Justice revoked the preliminary injunction it had granted Spribe OÜ after the Federal Court in Brasília suspended the legal effects of its INPI trademark registration.
• Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a separate inquiry into Spribe over alleged discrepancies between advertised and actual Return to Player figures on its games.
• Aviator Studio Brasil provided evidence that the Aviator trademark originated in Georgia in 2016 and was formally registered there in 2018, predating Spribe’s Brazilian registration.

Brazil Strips Spribe of Aviator Injunction After Federal Court Freezes Trademark

Spribe left a Brazilian courtroom in April with an injunction in hand, one that had pushed Betnacional off the Aviator name without contest. By 8 July 2026, that position was gone. The Pernambuco Court of Justice pulled back its own preliminary injunction, after the Federal Court in Brasília suspended the trademark registration the original ruling had rested entirely upon.

The order of events tells its own story. Back in April 2026, Pernambuco granted the injunction on a clear premise: Spribe held a live, enforceable AVIATOR trademark registration with Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property, and that registration conferred the right to demand exclusivity. Then the Federal Court in Brasília issued a separate ruling, provisionally suspending the legal effects of that INPI registration until a federal invalidation case reaches its end. The premise on which the injunction relied had been knocked out from under it.

Court Had No Room to Manoeuvre Under Brazilian Civil Procedure

Judge Andrea Epaminondas Tenorio de Brito found that the legal and factual foundation for the April ruling had dissolved. Article 296 of the Brazilian Code of Civil Procedure is unambiguous on this point: when the conditions behind a preliminary injunction change substantially, revocation is not optional. The Federal Court’s move against the INPI registration was exactly the kind of shift the article contemplates. Without an effective registration, Spribe’s claim to exclusivity had no legal anchor; the injunction fell with it.

Beyond the revocation itself, the court attached a further condition. Spribe is barred from asserting exclusivity over the Aviator name in Brazil for as long as the federal invalidation proceeding stays open. Neither in litigation nor in commercial negotiations can the company deploy the INPI registration as a bargaining chip until a final determination is made.

Prosecutor Opens Inquiry Into Spribe’s RTP Claims

The trademark fight is only part of what Spribe is managing in Brazil right now. June 2026 brought a separate problem: the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Federal District and Territories launched a formal inquiry into the developer over alleged misleading and abusive commercial conduct. At the centre of that inquiry sits a specific claim, that the Return to Player percentage Spribe advertises to players differs from the rate actually applied in the game.

The Prosecutor’s Office did not stop at opening the inquiry. It recommended that the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets act immediately, suspending Spribe’s technical certification and pulling its games from every licensed operator while the investigation runs. Whether the Secretariat has followed through on that recommendation has not been publicly confirmed.

Aviator Studio Brasil’s Evidence Drives the Federal Case

Aviator Studio Brasil filed the federal invalidation case that set this whole sequence in motion. The company presented evidence that the Pernambuco court reviewed directly, showing that the Aviator trademark did not start with Spribe. Records showed the trademark existed and was in active use in Georgia from 2016, with a formal registration there completed in 2018. Spribe’s Brazilian registration arrived after all of that.

Georgian courts did not reach a different conclusion. Rulings there had already invalidated Spribe’s registration of the Aviator trademark in that jurisdiction and confirmed the rights of the original owner. The Pernambuco court placed those foreign rulings on the record as part of its reasoning for the revocation.

What the April 2026 Injunction Had Actually Done?

When the April 2026 injunction landed, it carried real weight. Pernambuco ruled for Spribe against NSX Brasil S.A., the company behind Betnacional, which Flutter Entertainment owns. NSX was ordered to strip the Aviator name from its platform along with any visual, graphical, or audiovisual elements tied to Spribe’s product, with daily financial penalties running for every day it failed to comply.

Betnacional had operated as an authorised licensee of Spribe’s Aviator crash game from 2022 onwards. The relationship fractured in 2025 when the operator introduced an Aviator-branded game from a different studio, Aviator Studio, onto its platform. Spribe treated this as straightforward trademark infringement. The injunction that followed that claim no longer carries any legal effect.

Spribe’s Global Enforcement Effort Faces a Harder Road

Spribe has been fighting this trademark battle on several fronts at once. In the United Kingdom, the company secured an interim injunction against Aviator LLC, blocking its attempt to launch a rival crash game in the market. Spribe founder David Natroshvili made the company’s position explicit in August 2025: “Spribe created the Aviator crash game in 2018 and is the sole owner of the game globally.”

Georgia told a messier story. Aviator LLC had accused Spribe of infringing its trademark and imagery rights there, an accusation Spribe did not simply walk away from unscathed. In January 2025, Aviator LLC dropped its specific claim against Flutter, and its lawyer confirmed at the time that both parties had recognised each other’s rights and stepped back from all litigation between them.

Brazil has handed Spribe its clearest reversal yet in this dispute. The company entered the market with a registered trademark, used it to secure an injunction, and watched that injunction disappear when the registration behind it was suspended. A prosecutor’s inquiry running in parallel now applies pressure from a direction no trademark argument can deflect.

Expert Analysis

Brazil’s handling of the Aviator dispute puts a sharp light on something the iGaming industry tends to underestimate: holding a registered trademark in a jurisdiction does not guarantee legal safety, especially when a rival can demonstrate that an earlier claim to the same mark exists elsewhere. The Federal Court in Brasília has not declared Spribe’s trademark void. It has suspended the trademark’s legal effects while a formal invalidation proceeding runs its course. That is a narrow but consequential distinction, since it leaves open the question of what position Spribe will hold if it ultimately wins that proceeding.

For every licensed operator in Brazil currently running an Aviator-branded title, from any studio, the unresolved ownership question creates exposure that will not resolve until a final ruling is in place. Brazilian courts have increasingly scrutinised the basis on which preliminary injunctions are granted, requiring that the underlying rights claimed be demonstrably solid before granting or maintaining relief. The RTP inquiry compounds the picture further; it operates entirely outside trademark law, meaning Spribe’s success or failure on the intellectual property question has no bearing on whatever the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets decides about its games’ certification.