Lawsuit by Former NFL Players Against EA Allowed to Advance

[RaychelSnr]

It appears EA's other football game will find itself in hot water soon over the exact same issues that NCAA Football was plagued by: the use of likenesses of former players which are a little to close to reality.

In the lawsuit, former NFL players said the Madden NFL game had players with their exact characteristics, but EA had not obtained their permission to use the figures.

"We hold EA's use of the former players' likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA's main commercial purpose - to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams," Circuit Judge Raymond Fisher wrote in the opinion.

"Like NCAA Football, Madden NFL replicates players' physical characteristics and allows users to manipulate them in the performance of the same activity for which they are known in real life - playing football for an NFL team," Fisher wrote in his commentary.

On a tangible level, this suit doesn't pose much of a risk to the Madden brand as a whole, as unlike NCAA Football, the Madden brand is both bigger and not tied to the use of likenesses in this manner to succeed. So whatever comes out of this will be a payday for players used in the game, but will not affect business as usual from going on.

We'll be following the case though, as it could reaffirm the time-old tradition of using likenesses without the names as something which is no longer a viable option. This would all but eliminate the use of non-licensed historical teams in sports games.

[Critical Kills]

Lawyers will be the end of civilization

[rudeworld]

Quote: Originally Posted by ODogg

Lawyers will be the end of civilization

They keep the crooks and thieves in line. EA knowingly put these players likeliness into the game and they knew they should pay them.... But didn't. PAY THEM then see if you can recover from the hit.

[FaceMask]

Quote: Originally Posted by rudeworld

They keep the crooks and thieves in line. EA knowingly put these players likeliness into the game and they knew they should pay them.... But didn't. PAY THEM then see if you can recover from the hit.

That's often true, but sadly it's also often true that they are the crooks and thieves that need to be kept in line.

[capa]

Classic roster makers will fill the gaps...unless they start coming after us!!



C

[Rewmac]

Quote: Originally Posted by capa

Classic roster makers will fill the gaps...unless they start coming after us!! C

Everything can be elevated to a new level. They can just remove roster sharing as step. I hope nothing like this will come to reality.

[mestevo]

I was surprised to hear the class in this lawsuit is approximately 6000 players. Which Maddens combined had 6000 unique unlicensed players?

[NimitsTexan]

I was under the impression that EA had an agreement with the NFLPA that allows it to use player's likenesses? Is this just the handful of union hold-outs suing?

I had not even noticed any "fake" players in recent version of Madden . . .

Regardless, I am curious how far this precedent is going to go. I mean, if an author writes a book about a football player, is the player then automatically entitled to a cut?