Licensing Likenesses For Sports Games

mojotooth writes "According to an article on The Register (via Gamesindustry.biz), German courts have handed down a ruling that the EA Sports game FIFA World Cup 2002 cannot be sold in Germany, because it features the name and likeness of Bundesleague goalkeeper Oliver Kahn without his express permission. The court has not yet handed down damages. This could be troubling to the sports gaming industry - we might be forced back into the dark ages of sports gaming, where team names and jersey numbers could be used, but not the names or likenesses of the players."

Comments

kids, its called appropriation

[dextr0us]

Appropriation applies to any form of media, where someone can be identified. [on a side note, identificaiton means that they could be one of 15-20 people] In the news, we always have to be quite careful when releasing names and not photographs of people [confusion of a rapist is probably not a good thing].

I cant imagine fifa not having some sort of players association that they could liscence through. If they dont, they need to get their head in the game. Look at the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, NHL, even nascar. They all have players associations that handle likeness issues.

Not Oliver Khan

[Utopia]

Its Oliver Kahn

Here is the screenshot of Oliver in the game.

Another example...

[jayoyayo]

Another example of this can be found with Konami's brilliant Winning Eleven soccer games. They have a FIFAPro licensce (as EA has exclusive full FIFA licensce) and as such change around the names of many players (Rodalno instead of Ronaldo, etc..). However, a certain dutch league has threatened to sue Konami even with the mixed up names, thus many dutch players have the name Oranges002, Oranges003, etc... But its all good because Konami gives you the option of changing team names, player names, etc... Winning Eleven is far superior to EA's FIFA in everything but graphics.