Decision, EA: Judge Reverses Multimillion Dollar Award To Madden Dev

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "A federal judge overturned a jury's multimillion-dollar damage award to the programmer of the original John Madden Football video game on Wednesday, saying there was no evidence that his work was copied for seven years, without credit, by the marketer of later versions of the hugely successful game. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco spared Electronic Arts Inc. from nearly $4 million in damages, plus interest that could have exceeded $7 million. The jury verdict also could have led to larger damages against the company for later versions of the game, which reaped billions of dollars in revenues, if future juries found that those, too, had been lifted from the work of programmer Robin Antonick." Also at Kotaku.

Comments

Re:As usual, the rich win.

[anagama]

here's a link to the decision.
http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/...

The part relevant to the discussion here starts on PDF page 8, line 26.

It appears that the developer's attorneys presented an expert witness who provided an opinion regarding the similarity of the games. However, they did not actually demonstrate the games to the jury, which would have allowed the jury to make a subjective determination for itself. The judge ruled that because the jury never actually saw the games, they did not have enough information to rule that the games were similar.

Anyway, the attorneys better hope they win on appeal or figure out how to settle (perhaps for no fee) --- otherwise, the developer's next lawsuit is one for malpractice.