Evolution has urged a New Jersey court to reject a sweeping new discovery request filed by intelligence firm Black Cube in their long-running defamation dispute.
The request was lodged under New Jersey’s public-expression protection law and sought years of Evolution’s communications with regulators across the world.
Evolution’s lawyers submitted a letter on 18 August to judge John Porto, formally asking him to reject the broad discovery bid before proceedings advanced further.
The dispute between the two parties stretches back to 2021, when a Black Cube report accused Evolution of operating in prohibited markets.
That report was later revealed to have been funded by rival gaming company Playtech, adding another layer of controversy to the already contentious case.
Regulators in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania investigated the original claims and ultimately took no enforcement action against Evolution.
Evolution’s lawyer Michael Williams of Kirkland and Ellis was direct in his opposition, writing in the letter that the request was far beyond acceptable scope.
Williams stated: “This snowballing request serves no proper end, identifies no inconsistency, and would imperil the November 2026 UPEPA hearing date, already a year removed from the close of UPEPA briefing.”
Much of the current dispute centres on Evolution’s £4.75m settlement with the UK Gambling Commission, which closed a licence review into games found on six websites run by unlicensed operators.
Black Cube has pointed to that settlement, along with Evolution’s abandoned bid for Galaxy Gaming, as evidence supporting the claims made in its 2021 report.
Williams rejected that framing, noting the regulator’s findings related to conduct between April 2024 and January 2025, well after the period covered by the original Black Cube report.
Black Cube had argued that “the UKGC’s recent public statements confirm multiple of Black Cube’s key findings,” a characterisation that Williams flatly described as incorrect.
Two days after Evolution’s letter was filed, retired federal judge Robert Kugler, serving as special adjudicator, issued his own rulings on a separate set of motions in the case.
Kugler granted Evolution’s bid to compel depositions of defence experts Nelson Rose, Joshua Skule, and Ricardo Solano, with strict time limits applied to each session.
He ordered that the deposition sessions “shall not exceed four hours in length and counsel shall accommodate any witness request to appear virtually.”
Kugler denied Evolution’s requests to compel audio and video recordings and declined to pierce privilege over Black Cube’s legal communications.
He separately granted Black Cube’s motion to lift confidentiality on the so-called Spectrum report, a document that has been central to earlier discovery disputes throughout the case.
Oral argument on Black Cube’s wider discovery bid is scheduled to take place via Zoom on 1 September 2026, with Evolution firmly committed to opposing the request.
The case’s UPEPA hearing remains scheduled for November 2026, though the ongoing discovery battles continue to test the timeline set by the court.
