Casino equipment maker International Game Technology Plc says it has reached what it called a “patent cross-licensing agreement” with one of its biggest market rivals, casino technology and lottery services provider Scientific Games Corp.

A short press announcement from IGT on Tuesday gave no detail of how the deal would work in practice; in particular whether it would give Scientific Games access outside the Macau market to certain live-dealer electronic game technology claimed under a Macau patent by LT Game Ltd, and now held – under an April 2016 agreement – by IGT for world markets excluding Macau.

Scientific Games’ legacy unit Shuffle Master Inc had previously been in a long running dispute with LT Game, a unit of Hong Kong-listed Paradise Entertainment Ltd, regarding whether LT Game could claim exclusive rights in the Macau market to technology used in LT Game’s Live Multi Game product.

The latter uses electronic betting and bet settlement, but with a live dealer, and had proven particularly popular with mass-market players in East Asian markets, where players typically prefer to face human dealers rather than computer-based random number generator technology.

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