The deisgner of the original John Madden Football, Robin Antonick will finally get his day in court against longitme Madden developer EA. A federal judge dismissed EA's motion of dismissal over Antonick's lawsuit, which has Antonick seeking royalties and a cut of the profit from the series.
The lawsuit maintains that Antonick conceived and developed the first version of John Madden Football for the Commodore 64, MS-DOS and Apple II platforms.
It's alleged that EA and Antonick signed a series of publishing and development contracts, eventually culminating in an agreement requiring EA to pay him "royalties on any derivative works related to the original version of EA Madden, including current annual releases." Somewhere along the way, EA somehow failed to pay Antonick the millions of dollars they owed in royalties.
"We have very compelling evidence indicating that EA used Mr. Antonick's ground-breaking code and design elements as the basis for both past and present Madden NFL titles," Robert Carey, one of Antonick's attorneys, said in a press release. "Yet, EA has failed to compensate him as required by his agreement or give him proper credit for his work. We look forward to proving our case at trial, and we are very confident that we will prevail."
The Madden series are consistently best sellers, topping best seller charts all over the place. A virtual cash cow, they regularly sell millions of copies on each platform with each annual release. As of 2010, EA has managed to rake in over $3 billion in sales since the series debuted in 1988, a piece of which is arguably Antonick's.
EA's defense, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is that the ideas behind the game can not be copyrighted. Here are excerpts from their response to the lawsuit:
"The width of a playing field in a videogame is an idea or abstract rule, not protected by copyright."
"Virtual player attributes are functional parts of a system, and therefore unprotectable under copyright... Antonick's player ratings system is based on inherent elements of football, and therefore not copyrightable under the scenes a faire doctrine."
"The use of 'decision points' that stimulate football is nothing more than granular rules for a computer-mediated, turn-based game. The use of such rules for sports simulations is neither new nor copyrightable."
"To pursue the virtual ball carrier... these elements are 'methods' or 'behaviors' governing how defenders move within the game, and therefore uncopyrightable... Tackling ball carriers when they are within reach is behavior that is necessary to model a realistic football simulation."
The trial has been scheduled to begin on June 17, 2013.
