Decision, EA: Judge Reverses Multimillion Dollar Award To Madden Dev 125
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "A federal judge overturned a jury's multimillion-dollar damage award to the programmer of the original John Madden Football video game on Wednesday, saying there was no evidence that his work was copied for seven years, without credit, by the marketer of later versions of the hugely successful game. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco spared Electronic Arts Inc. from nearly $4 million in damages, plus interest that could have exceeded $7 million. The jury verdict also could have led to larger damages against the company for later versions of the game, which reaped billions of dollars in revenues, if future juries found that those, too, had been lifted from the work of programmer Robin Antonick." Also at Kotaku.
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Re:Contract disputes between developers and market (Score:4, Informative)
What a mess they are, and always will be.
It seems to be more like a dispute between developer and employer.
EA owned the rights to the game; they had signed with the programmer, an agreement for the developer to be compensated by royalties for the first edition.
For the second/third/later years editions, they claimed to have paid a team of developers to rewrite the software from scratch, so they could get out of having to pay royalties for future versions.
I'm sure from EA's point of view --- the millions of dollars in sales of later editions of the game were not attributable to the work of the programmer of the first edition or any individual software developer, but the valuable brand name they developed for their company and the product in partnership with Madden, and EA's fan base.
Re:Contract disputes between developers and market (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFY
The fact that a jury already found his claim valid, and he is only asking for compensation from the first few editions of Madden (not all versions up to current gen), makes me think he probably is due compensation.
But, you now how lawyers are. I am sure the EA lawyers can prove that the sky is green.
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If the code itself is a derivative work is different than if the story or art are derivatives. It is actually rather hyper-technical, it is not enough to just say it is a sequel so it is a derivative.
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It's Madden football. The NFL is the story and the game is the football. Graphics and gameplay improved with the sequels but it's still football strategy.
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Graphics and gameplay improved with the sequels but it's still football strategy.
That's not good enough. The burden of proof rests with the plaintiffs, to show a preponderance of the evidence, that the works were strikingly similar, not that they were just both football strategy games within the same genre, with similar operation and game mechanics.
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wow, thx for the link about some of the history about Visicalc! Didn't realize Mitch Kapor wrote VisiPlot and Visitrend, then left to found Lotus (of Lotus 123 fame)
The appeal process, bought and paid for (Score:1, Informative)
Bribes are so easy nowadays.
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No. This is the original judge overturning a jury determination. It is a legal determination, but he's not ruling on the law. I'm pretty sure there isn't any case law requiring side-by-side game demos in order to make a determination of infringement/contract-breach in the presence of analysis-based expert testimony for one party and thumb-up-ass rebuttal from the other.
This is blazing new (and stupid) ground.
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I don't know if it is new and stupid or not. A lot of stuff in the legal system seems stupid to me anyway. I want to agree with you because I hate EA so much.
statutory law requires evidence of identical sourc (Score:4, Informative)
On top of voluminous case the, the statute requires that the plaintiff show evidence that the copyrighted source code is the same. What is at issue is not the general concept of the game, but the source code.
Plaintiff presented no evidence at all that the source was copied. Therefore as a matter of law, the defense prevails. It's upto a jury to determine if the evidence is "good enough" . Under the law, it's up to the judge to rule when no evidence eas presented, and that's what happened in this case.
Plaintiff may or may not be right, but his attorneys presented no evidence that he was right - that his source code was copied.
Re: statutory law requires evidence of identical s (Score:1)
First off, the plaintiff brought in an expert who *did* make an assertion of source-code similarity. As programmers, we do this all the time. (Raymond Chen calls this "psychic debugging")
Secondly, without an understanding of how to identify underlying coding patterns from exhibited high level traits, how can the jury be expected to make a reasonable determination of code copying from a visual analysis of the *compiled* product? It's an on-the-face absurd assertion.
It is still surprising to me that decomp
perhaps. Did they subpoena the source? (Score:3)
I might agree somewhat with your conclusions if plaintiff properly attempted to get the source through discovery and EA didn't produce it. As far as I know, EA provided the source to plaintiff and plaintiff decided they didn't want the jury to see it. Perhaps it's written in an entirely different language.
If the source was copied, an expert should be able to SHOW evidence of that to the jury using techniques as simple as "strings". It sounds like the expert simply declared that he thought it was copied, r
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If that is the case (I haven't read the trial transcripts, just short trial summary reporting), then, yeah, that would be pretty effed.
Even if the code differs, if it can be shown (or suggested) that the code is a derivative construction, it would still be subject to copyright. Anyway, it's still a strange place to end up determining the case. Unless it's in East Texas, one would typically expect instructions to the jury to be sufficient to sway their directions (e.g. Lucy Koh in Apple v. Samsung).
for the LEGAL definition of derivative work, yes (Score:2)
Agreed. I recently learned that the legal definition of a derivative work is narrower than what I had thought. You CAN, under copyright law, start from someone else's work and "make it your own".
Silly Wabbit (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents and Copyrights are for rich companies....not people.
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The Law is for rich companies, not people.
FTFY
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Ask your dad how much money he is willing to spend defending it.
As they say: the value of a patent is equal to the money you are able to spend defending it.
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Don't worry, it's OK to *have* patents, you just can't *use* them very well...
Your dad... (Score:2)
I wager, if your dad's patent was ever violated by a large company. His chance to defend his patent is extremely slim. Even if he manages to fight in court and win, the settlement, will likely be far less than the benefit said large company derived by violating his patent.
It is not impossible for an individual small time person to purchase a patent. It is just extremely hard and nigh impossible for said individual to substantially defend and benefit, from said patent.
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Antonick will appeal the ruling, his lawyers said. "The evidence showed they used his source code without permission," said attorney Robert Carey.
And so it's overturned, but will be appeled.
I think I'm going to trust the little guy getting screwed on this one.
One does not get to appeal just because he lost his case and wishes to give it another go. One gets to appeal because there is some evidence that the judge overseeing the case may have made a mistake as far as the law is concerned, such as giving wrong instructions to the jury or rejecting a valid motion. So to bring the case in front of a second judge means that already there was a valid concern about the behavior of the first judge; winning this appeal means that the second judge agrees that something wen
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The lawyer could argue that the case should have been sent back for re-trial, and not simply overturned. The basis of this judge's ruling is that the jury could not have had enough evidence to reach the decision that it did, which is certainly reasonable, however that doesn't mean the "correct" answer is to rule the exact opposite of whatever the jury happened to decide.
If the problem was an ill-informed jury, then the solution is a better-informed one.
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I used to be a huge fan of the Madden series up until a year or few before they stopped building a PC version (used to have loads of fun playing online with that terrible little java based matchmaker before they broke everything and made matchmaking built-in).
I also used to work at EA around this time, and even beta tested the first Madden PS2 release (though, not a single bug I reported was fixed).
I used to be given these weird little tasks (instead of manning the phones like I was supposed to) where I w
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Suppose they don't have the 1988 source code?
If they rewrote the next version from scratch as they claimed, it's not surprising that they didn't put much of an effort into preserving the 1988 version for the next 25 years.
Why not look? (Score:2)
Why don't they just look at the source code of the two versions? It should be obvious whether it was copied. Maybe the lawyers don't make enough money of they use common sense.
Not permitted to look (Score:2)
It may have been completely innocent worry about trade secrets but there are other possibilities, such as the unwillingness to incriminate themselves, that sound more likely to me.
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I suggest speculating why the source code of the possible derived version was not made available to the court or the expert witness.
It may have been completely innocent worry about trade secrets but there are other possibilities, such as the unwillingness to incriminate themselves, that sound more likely to me.
Sounds plausible: "Your honor, I invoke the fifth, there is no way I will show you the source code of Module1.bas".
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Maybe they don't have the source code from the 1988 version any more. They claim they weren't using that source code for subsequent versions of the game, and they couldn't release a patch on the Internet if they found bugs after it was released, so there wasn't much perceived value in preserving the source code. And they certainly didn't expect to have to preserve it for 25 years.
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If the source code was reused you can be quite sure they would have introduced that as evidence. But they never introduced the code or even the games as evidence. Hmmm.
They based their claim on an "expert" opinion that the games looked very similar, therefore the source code must have been copied. Because everyone knows that you couldn't possibly rewrite the game to run on the same hardware using the same story without copying the code, right?
Re: Why not look? (Score:2)
Since when is that new? Humans have been screwing each other over since forever.
This is ~still America (Score:1)
One judge or a thousand judges SHOULD NOT be able to overturn a ({[JURY'S]}) virdict. Period.
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Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:4, Informative)
Judges rule on matters of law, juries on facts of the case. If it's overturned by a judge, that means there was some legal problem with the first trial.
In this case, the jury made a finding, that the Judge ruled the jury could not reasonably have made.
The Jury was claiming finding the later editions of the game to be nearly identical ------ without the jury having been presented for side-by-side comparison as evidence
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The Jury was claiming finding the later editions of the game to be nearly identical ------ without the jury having been presented for side-by-side comparison as evidence
How is this the fault of the jury, rather than the fault of the defense team?
It's good to see that if I've got enough cash and I ever break the law, all I need to do is refuse to show an "expert witness" is wrong - it's far easier to just find a convenient judge to rule that since I didn't present any evidence, they jury's verdict should be overturned. *facepalm*
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How is this the fault of the jury, rather than the fault of the defense team?
It's the fault of the plaintiff, that the jury weren't presented with a side-by-side showing of versions of the game, OR any evidence sufficient to show that later editions were similar.
It doesn't matter which party's "fault" it is though, or if it was nobody's fault. It is the Judge's job to dismiss the case, if he reviews the jury's verdict, and he finds that it was not possible for them to have reasonably made the finding,
Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why I disagree with the finding.
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So now you know the Golden Rule. Them with the gold makes the rules. I learned this on the Bugs Bunny show, it was a favorite quote of Bugs.
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It's good to see that if I've got enough cash and I ever break the law, all I need to do is refuse to show an "expert witness" is wrong - it's far easier to just find a convenient judge to rule that since I didn't present any evidence, they jury's verdict should be overturned. *facepalm*
Welcome to America, where you can have all the justice* you can afford.
* Dictionaries are being rewritten as we speak.
TFA says "as required by law" (Score:2)
TFA says:
> Breyer, who presided over the trial, ruled Wednesday that the jurors had no basis for that conclusion
> because they were never shown the games side by side in order to make their own evaluation, as the law requires for a verdict of copyright infringement.
If, as the article says, the law requires that the jury look at the two works and decide for themselves if they are the same, and that wasn't done, that's a slam dunk for the defense. The plaintiff's attorney should have followed the law a
Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:5, Informative)
here's a link to the decision.
http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/... [amlaw.com]
The part relevant to the discussion here starts on PDF page 8, line 26.
It appears that the developer's attorneys presented an expert witness who provided an opinion regarding the similarity of the games. However, they did not actually demonstrate the games to the jury, which would have allowed the jury to make a subjective determination for itself. The judge ruled that because the jury never actually saw the games, they did not have enough information to rule that the games were similar.
Anyway, the attorneys better hope they win on appeal or figure out how to settle (perhaps for no fee) --- otherwise, the developer's next lawsuit is one for malpractice.
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As an afterthought, perhaps the developer's attorneys knew their suit wouldn't stand up to a side by side comparison, informed their client that their only chance was to wing it with an expert (dime a dozen at $1000/hr), and hope for the best. In that case, the attorneys are home free. But ... that seems pretty far fetched.
Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:5, Interesting)
A read of the opinion you linked to, and I think the appeal was wrong. The appellant judge should have ruled that the expert opinion on the similarity of the games be inadmissable, and return the case to the lower court for a re-hearing. Given the testimony (allowed at the time) that the games were identical, and without anything to contradict it, the jury ruled they were identical. Overturning the entire case because one piece of testimony was given improperly should result in a re-trial, not an overturn. If the plaintiff were told that witness was excluded for that reason, he could have proven his point another way. That the lower court made an error in allowing it doesn't change the facts.
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If the expert was wrong, then the defense should have shown them side-by-side to show the differences.
This. After reading the judge's ruling, I'm convinced it has more to do with the brand-new swimming pool in his backyard with an EA logo on the bottom than anything to do with the facts of the case...
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After reading the judge's ruling, I'm convinced it has more to do with the brand-new swimming pool in his backyard with an EA logo on the bottom than anything to do with the facts of the case...
Your comment is meaningless since it has no connection to reality or any of that actual facts of the case.
True, the judge may be "wrong". But you are suggesting a "payoff", which is extreamly unlikly.
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Umm... about this concept of "meaning". I don't think it means what you think it means. In particular, I don't think "meaningless" means the same thing as "metaphorical". It doesn't mean "as yet unsupported by actual evidence", either.
See? You even managed to extract some meaning from the GP post yourse
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True. We know federal judges are above anything like bribery.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/09... [nytimes.com]
http://articles.orlandosentine... [orlandosentinel.com]
http://news.google.com/newspap... [google.com]
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Three cases in 30 years? Yeah, that's awful.
P.S: Seriously, there's only like a dozen judges impeached for bribery and corruption since 1800 [wikipedia.org].
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I very much doubt the judge was bribed - if he was it should be pretty easy to show and he, along with many EA execs would go to jail.
But the fun part of our modern fedual system is that the rich don't need to bribe their lackeys. Due to the wonders of the right wing authoritarian mindset the lackeys will do the right thing, even when they gain nothing. Even when it costs them something.
Not exactly, but not too far off (Score:2)
I read an article about how contract law is taught in schools. The point the article made was that law schools teach sorta like medical school: first, do no harm. Basically, when lawyers & judges are faced with a contract suit, their looking for the optimal solution for _both_ parties. Their not exactly concerned with what's right or wrong, legal or i
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That sounds like a bad ruling. If the expert was right, then the jury was right. If the expert was wrong, then the defense should have shown them side-by-side to show the differences.
The defense does not have to provide any evidence (unless they make claims of their own). It is always up to the party who initiates the lawsuit to either prove without reasonable doubt (in criminal law) or to show preponderance of evidence (civil law).
When a defendant has deeper pockets than the other party, it can be a good trial strategy to suffer in silence in front of a jury then have the case reviewed on appeal. On one hand cooler heads prevail (jurors often feel for the smaller guy) and also there is
Re:As usual, the rich win. (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] also there is always the chance that the other party will run out of money and give up. Being a civil case this is fair game.
No, as always, a "deep pockets" win is not a fair game, it is dirty pool.
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It is always up to the party who initiates the lawsuit to either prove without reasonable doubt (in criminal law) or to show preponderance of evidence (civil law).
An expert saying "The answer is cactus" and the defense saying nothing would lead to a finding (in civil) that the answer is cactus. With one witness, one word, and no response, the answer will always be for the plaintiff. That's how preponderance should (and does) work.
The failure here is that the appellate judge ruled that when you exclude the witness he thinks should have been excluded, that there wasn't enough presented to find for the plaintiff. The problem is that hearings are living things. The
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An expert saying "The answer is cactus" and the defense saying nothing would lead to a finding (in civil) that the answer is cactus. With one witness, one word, and no response, the answer will always be for the plaintiff. That's how preponderance should (and does) work.
No. The preponderance of evidence means that the plaintiff must make the demonstration that it is more likely than not that what he claims is true (unlike a murder trial where there must be no doubt). It does not mean that the defense has to contradict the plaintiff or provide any kind of evidence.
If you sit in a jury and the plaintiff claims that the defendant is a witch who prevented him from winning the lottery, you don't have to agree and award him 25 millions even if the defendant does not contradict t
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Claims by the plaintiff are not evidence. They are not the same as factual evidence presented by the plaintiff or expert testimony. The defendant needs to rebut evidence presented by the other side, but not unsupported assertions.
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But if defense doesn't present any evidence, doesn't that make it an automatic win for the plaintiff under preponderance of evidence? After all, even someone just saying that he believes that they stole something from him is more then silence.
I testify CmdrTaco is a horse. Plaintiff no eviden (Score:2)
> But if defense doesn't present any evidence, doesn't that make it an automatic win for the plaintiff under preponderance of evidence?
I hereby state that CmdrTaco, founder of Slashdot, is a typing horse.
Noone has testified that he's not a horse. Do you believe that he's a horse?
Plaintiff has to convince the jury that "it is more likely than not" that his version of the facts are true. This case has a great example. Regarding the statute of limitations, plaintiff claims that it wasn't until version 4
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Does the expert opinion not count as evidence? If you had a vet testify that yes, CmdrTaco is a horse that likes to walk across keyboards, and the other side did nothing to refute that, why shouldn't the jury rule that CmdrTaco is a horse? Especially since the defense refused to present him to the jury to show that he is a human.
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Yes, it does. The expert testimony in this case seems to have been that the two versions of the game had substantially similar appearances.
Which might be 100% true.
Alas, nearly (or even actually) identical appearance on the desktop in no way implies nearly (or actually) identical code.
And copyright cases are about code, not appearances.
Opinions not evidence. "I THINK because ..." (Score:2)
Generally, no opinions aren't evidence. Opinions are BASED on evidence and an expert can explain the technical evidence to the jury. ...". For example they do show and tell, showing the jury two DNA samples and pointing out the differences. The jury themselves see the differences, which are the evidence. The expert is there to show the jury where to look, to explain the evidence.
If the expert hasn't seen the code, he can't testify that it's the same. He can only testify "I think it's so BECAUSE
Apparentl
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But wasn't the ruling exactly the opposite of what you said? The judge said that because the jurors didn't see the appearance of the two games side by side they couldn't rule that EA reusing code. From what I've read there was nothing about source code in the ruling.
code isn't code? (Score:2)
I'm not understanding what you're saying. You said:
> they couldn't rule that EA reusing code. From what I've read there was nothing about source code.
The ruling was that their was no evidence of EA copying the code, and there's nothing about code? Are you suggesting there is some other kind of code at issue other than source code? He sued EA for copying his source code.
The expert testified that the output of the game looked similar.
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Yeah, sorry about that.
From what I've read, the judge basically ruled that the jury couldn't say that EA made a derivative work, without the jury seeing the two games running side by side. So he didn't care about the source code, just the look of the games and ruled that the look was more important than anything else (such as the expert testimony).
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Additionally, in this case the plaintiff presented NO EVIDENCE that the source code was copied. Since the plaintiff presented NO evidence on the key question of the case, shouldn't the defendant win by default. Yes, they should, the judge ruled.
So why bother with juries in civil trials if the judge can over-rule them arbitrarily and capriciously?
neither arbitrary nor capricious (Score:2)
Noticing that plaintiff didn't present any evidence regarding a required element is neither arbitrary nor capricious.
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The judge may have made an error in allowing the expert witness in the first place, but compounding it with a second, larger error doesn't help.
on what planet? (Score:2)
Wow that's a bunch of complete nonsense. You haven't read TFS, TFA, the opinion, or any of the other comments, have you?
Since you seem to only read my comments, here's a quick summary. The judge allowed an "expert" witness to take the stand to show the evidence to the jury and explain it, as expert witnesses do. The expert witness didn't show any evidence and didn't explain in any evidence. He just said "in my opinion plaintiff should win". That's nice and all, but it's not evidence.
The law requires that
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material witness vs expert witness. not opinion (Score:2)
There are two kinds of witnesses, material witnesses and expert witnesses.
Material witnesses saw, heard, or found something. Expert witnesses explain what someone else saw, heard, or found.
In other words, material wwitnesses provide evidence. Expert witnesses explain evidence.
This isn't my opinion, this has been law for hundreds of years, since before the American revolution.
He wasn't called as a material witness .The PLAINTIFF decided he was an expert witness, not a material witness. In other words it was
expert witness != material witness, since 1782 (Score:3)
There are two kinds of witnesses, material witnesses and expert witnesses.
Material witnesses saw, heard, or found something. Expert witnesses explain what someone else saw, heard, or found.
In other words, material wwitnesses provide evidence. Expert witnesses explain evidence.
This isn't my opinion, this has been law since 1782, when Smeaton explained the silt in Wells Harbour.
In this case, he wasn't called as a material witness. The PLAINTIFF decided he was an expert witness, not a material witness. In othe
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It is not up to the defense to prove they didn't copy. It is up to the plaintiff to prove that they did.
When the plaintiff bungles, don't expect the defendant in an adversarial system to set up the correct test to save the plaintiff's behind. Instead, expect the defense to file motions claiming that the plaintiff bungled it. As happened here.
IANAL, and since your advice is so awful, you should probably disclaim it too ;)
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I disagree on this one.
Let's take a car analogy.
If I bring suit because you hit my car and drove off, then bring a witness who says you hit my car and drove off, and you do jack+shit in the case only to claim in a post-verdict motion that I didn't provide photographs of my car in support of my case, you will get laughed out of court.
Unless you're EA. The judge may have thought that the judgement was high, but a jury found that the preponderance of the evidence supported the plaintiff's claim. Remember, th
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Sure, showing the games might help show that, but an expert witness who has made a deep inspection of the games in question can determine if the underlying mechanics of scoring, play selection, and player rating are derivative, without getting bamboozled by 16-bit graphics. In this case, the staggering move is the absolute lack of source code. Sheesh, people. Just subpoena the source. Oh, it's not available? How about expert analysis determining the algorithmic similarity?
I think if we were talking about Zelda or Metroid, your point would be spot on. In this case it's a sports game. Aside from various year-to-year rule changes and some evolution of tactics, the game has remained unchanged for a hundred years and "underlying mechanics of scoring, play selection, and player rating" are going to highly similar no matter what developers built it.
Cross the goal line with the ball? That's six points. Kick it through the uprights? That's three points. Do the latter immediately aft
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You've obviously not played many sports games.
You are mistaken.
The gameplay favored the pass. Others you'd run every time. The gameplay greatly favored the run.
Ever think this might have nothing to do with some special "mechanics" and instead was influenced by the game's available talent? People that play sports games (especially Madden) will tend to pick the same team a majority of the time; the team they root for. This ends up influencing how they play the game from year to year.
If you play with the 2012 Broncos, you're probably throwing the ball nearly every down. If you play with the 2011 Broncos, you're probably running the ball nearly every
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If the game mechanics are derivative is a different question than if the code is.
If they owned the game look & feel, if the mechanics were their own idea and their contract with the developer was regarding the actual code, as such agreements normally do, then none of that matters. In that case, you can hire a different team of developers, and if you don't even show them the old code, only the look and feel, they can duplicate the gameplay exactly and it is not a derivative. If you show the new team the
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I'm not really sure what you mean about "some were so different ... " Are you referring to the differences between Madden from year to year? With some exceptions, the gameplay from year to year was pretty much the same.
That's what the jury found as well, but the judge over-ruled the jury.
Why do you think that is? Because football has pretty much stayed the same.
Back in the late '80s, the sports games had substantially different looks and feels. They also had different gameplay. The plaintiffs assertion (proven in court to a jury, over-ruled by the trial judge who allowed the testamony) was that if there were no copying, the games would have been more different, as different as two random football games of the same year. Was the Tecmo version identical to the EA of the same year (not EA, but b
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It is not up to the defense to prove they didn't copy. It is up to the plaintiff to prove that they did.
The jury thinks the plaintiff did.
When the plaintiff bungles, don't expect the defendant in an adversarial system to set up the correct test to save the plaintiff's behind. Instead, expect the defense to file motions claiming that the plaintiff bungled it. As happened here.
The failure wasn't on the part of the plaintiff. It was on the part of the judge.
IANAL, and since your advice is so awful, you should probably disclaim it too
What's to disclaim? No party of this suit is reading this, so nobody else could possibly take this as legal advice. And the only people who need to disclaim are actual lawyers. Laymen are allowed to give incorrect legal advice as much as they want, as long as they aren't in a commercial arrangement with the other party.
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Laymen are allowed to give incorrect legal advice as much as they want, as long as they aren't in a commercial arrangement with the other party.
False. Lawman are allowed to have opinions about legal matters, but are not allowed to give legal advice.
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Did you actually read the decision? Because this was not the result of an appeal. That is yet to come. This was a decision by the trial judge.
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Derivative Works, not Virtually Identical (Score:2)
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Wouldn't the games be irrelevant? (Score:2)
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Judges rule on matters of law, juries on facts of the case. If it's overturned by a judge, that means there was some legal problem with the first trial.
That depends on what State you are in. For example, in the State Georgia, it is explicitly written into the State Constitution that jurors may rule on matters of law as well.
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Not according to Jacob Applebaums (lead developer of TOR) latest talk at Chaos 30C3
http://media.ccc.de/browse/con... [media.ccc.de]
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Well, he's probaly smarter than some mouse that spends all its time talking to itself.
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Then again, they've owned drug trafficking to fund black wars since the 60's too. Suppose medical pot really pissed in their cheerios.
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ITYM ONI?