VIDEO GAME LAWSUITS
What’s more exciting than a video game? The legal battles that ensue when video game companies sue each other.
THE PLAINTIFF
Rock band No Doubt
THE DEFENDANT
Activision
THE LAWSUIT
Before she was a pop star and a judge on The Voice, Gwen Stefani was the lead singer of the successful band No Doubt, with hits like “Just a Girl,” “Don’t Speak,” and “Ex-Girlfriend.” The band’s music was a logical choice to include in Band Hero, Activision’s 2009 entry in its best-selling Guitar Hero interactive video game franchise. The members of No Doubt licensed their music and their likenesses to Activision, but claimed they were unaware that the video game characters could be used to play non–No Doubt songs. For example, a player could use a “Gwen Stefani” avatar to sing and play a Taylor Swift song, or one by the cheesy 1980s hair metal band Poison. The day after Band Hero was released, No Doubt sued Activision for using their images in what the filing called “a virtual karaoke circus act.”
THE VERDICT
The case never made it to court. After their lawyers negotiated for three years, the band and the video game company reached a (sealed) settlement that didn’t require the game to be pulled from store shelves.
THE PLAINTIFF
Magnavox
THE DEFENDANT
Atari
THE LAWSUIT
Pong (1972) was the first famous video game, but it wasn’t the first electronic game played on a TV screen with a joystick. Nor was it the first video game in which play was a simplified presentation of table tennis—two lines representing paddles, and a white dot for a ball. Magnavox gave public demonstrations of a table tennis game for its home video game system Odyssey, at department stores in early 1972. Nolan Bushnell had just started a software company called Atari. (He and engineer Allan Alcorn had been contracted by a casino chain to develop a driving simulator.) After he played Magnavox’s table tennis game at a demo in a Burlingame, California, department store, Bushnell asked Alcorn to develop a coin-operated electronic table tennis game as a test of his programming abilities. But Alcorn did such a good job, Bushnell released it commercially. When Pong became a sensation, Ralph Baer, inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, sued Atari, alleging that the company had stolen his creation.
Deadliest Disney character: Mulan. She killed about 2,000 people in the 1998 movie Mulan.
THE VERDICT
Bushnell’s attorney advised him to take the case to trial, but Atari settled out of court in 1976 because Bushnell estimated that his legal costs were going to be more than all the money Atari had on hand at the time. As part of the settlement, Atari continued to produce Pong for arcades and home video game consoles, but Magnavox received licensing fees and a royalty for every game sold.
THE PLAINTIFF
Former college athletes Sam Keller and Ed O’Bannon
THE DEFENDANT
Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company
THE LAWSUIT
Despite massive TV and merchandising deals that generate billions of dollars for companies and universities, the athletes who actually play college football, basketball, and other sports don’t get paid a cent (other than scholarships)—they’re amateurs. In 2009 former college basketball player Ed O’Bannon and former college football player Sam Keller sued EA, maker of the popular NCAA Basketball and NCAA Football video game franchises, and Collegiate Licensing, the firm that sets up all those college sports deals.
REASON
They didn’t believe that their amateur athlete status applied to exploitation of their images that made other people rich. On behalf of all former athletes, they wanted royalties for allowing their likenesses to be used in those successful games.
THE VERDICT
After a long legal battle, Keller and O’Bannon settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. However, their lawsuit changed the way the video game industry operated and how the business of college sports work. After the suit was settled in 2013, EA permanently discontinued all NCAA-branded games. Not only that, but the company started writing checks. In early 2016, athletes whose faces were used in certain EA Sports collegiate titles started getting checks in the mail in the range of $1,200–$7,200.
First U.S. territory to grant women the vote: Wyoming, in 1869. First U.S. state to elect a female governor: Wyoming (Nellie Tayloe Ross, in 1924).
Atari
THE DEFENDANT
Philips
THE LAWSUIT
Developed in Japan by Namco and released to the rest of the world by Bally/Midway, Pac-Man was a global sensation in the early 1980s. Within 18 months of its release, the game about a yellow pie that eats white dots and avoids ghosts earned $1 billion in revenues. And that’s just at arcades—in 1981 Namco and Bally/Midway were in the process of adapting or “porting” Pac-Man to home video game consoles, particularly the Atari 2600. But before Pac-Man could hit homes, Philips Electronics came out with a game called K.C. Munchkin for its Odyssey 2 console. It wasn’t an exact clone of Pac-Man, but it looked like developers tried to make it just different enough from Pac-Man to avoid a lawsuit—the maze walls move around the screen, and the villains are monsters, not ghosts. But it was also a game about a circle that ate dots. Atari, which owned the home gaming rights to Pac-Man, sued Philips for copyright infringement.
THE VERDICT
Atari lost its initial case—it wanted an injunction to stop the sale of K.C. Munchkin—but the company appealed, and in 1982 an appellate court ruled that Philips had ripped off Pac-Man. Later that year, Atari released its home version of Pac-Man…and sold seven million copies.
…AND NOW A FEW WORDS ABOUT PIE
“Pie makes everybody happy.”
—Laurie Halse Anderson
“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.”
—Jane Austen
“Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
—David Mamet
“Pie fills the cracks of the heart.”
—Kevin James (as Paul Blart, Mall Cop)
“Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.”
—Jonathan Swift
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