Antonick v.
Electronic Arts, Inc.
United States District Court for the District of Northern
Case No: 3:11-cv-01543
On Friday,
June 21, 2013, a one-week trial culminated in a jury finding that Robin
Antonick (the programmer for the original “Madden NFL” game released
in the late 1980s) was not barred from suing for millions in royalties by the
statute of limitations.
Back in
1988, Antonick was responsible for programming the first iteration of
Electronic Arts Madden NFL series for
the Apple II.  Antonick alleges that EA
owes him royalties stemming from their Madden
game released on the Sega Genesis.
The jury, specifically, found that Antonick did not become aware of EA’s
alleged breach until 2009 at EA’s 20th anniversary celebration of the
franchise.  Whereas Antonick’s version of
the game took four years to make, multiple EA employees involved with the
franchise reminisced how the Sega version only took six months to make, even
though none of the lead developers had ever created a videogame before.  Antonick alleges that he then began to
realize that there was no way the game could have been developed in that amount
of time without relying on the source code he wrote.  Leonard Aragon, Antonick’s attorney, goes on
to allege that the Sega version of the game used a football field 80 yards
wide, whereas a typical field is 53 yards wide.
This is significant because, in Antonick’s original game, the field was
80 yards wide, and there is, “no reason to have it that size unless you
take it from the previous game; [because] if you put [Antonick’s] plays on a
53-yard field half the team would be off the field.”  Electronic Arts alleges that Antonick could
have discovered this information back in 2004 when the publisher was celebrating
the franchise’s 15th anniversary.
Trial is
scheduled to being on July 1, 2013, to determine if, and to what extent, EA owes
royalties to Antonick.  The verdict could
be substantial.  Under the original contract, EA agreed to pay Antonick royalties
on any works that are either derivative of the original 1988 game or any other
works stemming from those derivative works.
We will
continue to update as more information becomes available.
NovaLogic, Inc. v. Activision Blizzard Et. al.
Case Update: Electronic Arts, Inc. v. Zynga, Inc.