Why has nearly 6,000 former NFL players filed a lawsuit against EA over madden?”
Former NFL footballer Tony Davis is attempting to bring a class action suit consisting of “approximately 6,000” retired NFL players against EA, for the “unlawful use” of player likenesses in the John Madden series of games. You may recall an individual lawsuit being pursued against EA by Jim Brown over the company’s use of a player he considered very similar to himself in one of Madden’s historic teams. Davis’ suit is being pursued on the same grounds, but is clearly much wider in scope. The legal papers (which were filed on 29 July and can be viewed in pdf form here) state “EA’s commercial exploitation of of retired NFL players is both blatant and prolific as the 2009 edition of the NFL Madden video game contained over 140 “historic teams” containing likenesses of thousands of retired NFL players.” Davis cites the example of Madden NFL 09’s 1979 Tampa Bay Buccaneers team, which features a player with identical stats to himself – save for wearing an (editable) number 37 jersey instead
A class action lawsuit has been filed in a US District Court in California by former Bengals and Bucs RB Tony Davis on the behalf of around 6,000 retired NFL players against Electronic Arts over Madden NFL 09. The suit claims that EA “knowingly and intentionally” used player likenesses in such a way that licensing fees could be avoided. “EA’s commercial exploitation of retired NFL players is both blatant and prolific, as the 2009 edition of the Madden NFL video game contained over 140 historic teams containing likenesses of thousands of retired NFL players. EA was fully aware that its use of the retired players’ likenesses was without authorisation and that a license fee was needed. “The only significant detail that EA changes from the real-life retired NFL players is their jersey number. Despite EA’s scrambling of the retired NFL players’ numbers, the games are designed so that consumers of the Madden NFL video game franchise will have no difficulty identifying who the historic player
Former Bengals running back Tony Davis has filed a class-action suit against EA on behalf of some 6,000 retired NFL pros over the use of player likenesses in Madden NFL 09, reports IGN. The plaintiffs argue that EA never compensated thousands of retired players whose likenesses were used to fill the rosters for the game’s historic teams. The suit alleges that EA “knowingly and intentionally” included the stats, positions, height and weights of retired players, but removed player names and uniform numbers to avoid paying anyone.
