backIn March 2024, on behalf of Skillz Platform Inc., King & Spalding filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asserting claims for false advertising and unfair business practices under the Lanham Act and N.Y. General Business Law against Papaya Gaming Ltd. and Papaya Gaming Inc. (together, “Papaya”) for Papaya’s undisclosed use of bots, which Skillz alleges unfairly control the outcomes of tournaments in its mobile gaming applications.
Papaya advertises that its games are “fair” and “skill-based,” and that Papaya itself has no “vested interest” in who wins or loses.
Skillz alleges that this advertising is false because, in fact, Papaya uses bots, has an interest in who wins when bots are used, and posts scores attributed to nonexistent players. Skills alleges Papaya built its business improperly using bots.
On October 27, 2025, Federal Judge Denise Cote denied Papaya summary judgment, allowing claims to proceed to trial, finding Papaya undisputedly used bots and that Skillz provided sufficient evidence to allow a jury to find in its favor. Judge Cote stated that “a jury could find that Papaya's representations that tournaments were ‘fair’, ‘skill-based,’ and only between ‘individuals’ were ‘literally false’ because Papaya deployed bots across its games.” She denied another Papaya motion related to damages, thus, Skillz may present damages models amounting to several hundreds of millions of dollars at trial.
The King & Spalding team consists of Lazar Raynal, Craig Carpenito, Jessica Benvenisty, Barry Kamar, Katie McCarthy, Amy Nemetz, Mike Lombardo, Michael Day-Toles, Rachel Corella, James Butler, and Curtis Crooke.