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:Contract disputes between developers and market

[codepigeon]

" they had signed with the programmer, an agreement for the developer to be compensated by royalties for the first edition and any derivative works"
FTFY

The fact that a jury already found his claim valid, and he is only asking for compensation from the first few editions of Madden (not all versions up to current gen), makes me think he probably is due compensation.

But, you now how lawyers are. I am sure the EA lawyers can prove that the sky is green. ...."it depends on what your definition of 'is' is..."