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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.
If the expert was wrong, then the defense should have shown them side-by-side to show the differences.
This. After reading the judge's ruling, I'm convinced it has more to do with the brand-new swimming pool in his backyard with an EA logo on the bottom than anything to do with the facts of the case...