Flight-tracking company FlightAware sued prediction-market operator Kalshi on August 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing it of using FlightAware's trademark and data without authorization to run wagering markets on flight cancellations.
The complaint, filed as case 1:26-cv-06824 against Kalshi and several affiliated entities, alleges that in mid-July Kalshi submitted a self-certification to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission naming FlightAware as the \u201cPrimary Source Agency\u201d for determining outcomes on contracts tied to the share of scheduled flights canceled at specific airports. FlightAware says Kalshi displayed its registered trademark and told users that outcomes were \u201cverified from FlightAware\u201d, all without its consent, despite prior cease-and-desist demands.
Safety Concerns Layered on Top of the Trademark Fight
Beyond trademark infringement, breach of contract, and unfair competition claims, FlightAware's filing raises a safety argument: that wagering on flight cancellations \u201ccreates an incentive for participants to interfere with air travel — including by causing or contributing to flight cancellations — to profit from their wagers.\u201d The company says Kalshi's expansion into commercial flight betting beginning in July created public confusion, with customers assuming FlightAware endorsed the markets, and that there was \u201cwidespread outrage and concern that the markets would incentivize unsafe tactics to impact cancellations, threatening public safety.\u201d FlightAware is seeking a temporary restraining order along with preliminary and permanent injunctions to halt the markets, plus damages and an accounting of profits Kalshi derived from them. Kalshi had not responded to the lawsuit as of publication.
Another Front in Kalshi's Legal Year
The suit lands in the middle of a broader stretch of litigation for Kalshi. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court sided with the company in a jurisdictional fight over sports event contracts, while state regulators in Arizona, Connecticut, and elsewhere have separately pursued cease-and-desist orders and criminal charges against it over event contracts on elections and sports. Combined, Kalshi and Polymarket controlled more than 90% of prediction-market volume and generated over $90 billion in notional volume in the second quarter, a scale that has made the category a magnet for exactly this kind of legal challenge as it expands into ever more specific, real-world betting markets.
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For FlightAware, the case is as much about reputational control as commercial terms: the complaint centers on the risk that its brand becomes associated with a betting product it says it never approved, layered on top of a public-safety argument regulators and courts have not yet had to weigh in a prediction-markets case of this kind.
