Electronic Arts is not playing ball with Robin Antonick. The publisher has asked a California federal court to dismiss all claims in Antonick’s suit against EA. Antonick alleges that EA has cheated him out of two decades worth of royalties for the work he did on the original John Madden Football. He further states that future titles in the series were based on work he did, including the simulated “three-dimensional projection” of the playing field, player AI, the instant replay feature, and the idea of a “positional camera”.
EA calls those claims invalid, past the statute of limitations, and also based on work that is not copyrightable. It further states that all Madden games after John Madden Football for Sega Genesis did not even use Antonick’s code, and the concepts are “merely unprotectable ideas, processes, methods of operation, equations, or algorithms,” citing language used by Antonick in his original claim.
"Antonick's contract with EA provides for royalty payments only for derivative works under copyright law, not simply for any work that traces some idea back to, or shares a name with, the versions Antonick worked on."
EA also states that it provided to Antonick the source code for the Genesis version of John Madden Football to prove that it had no connection with his original code. It also provided the courts with “five sworn declarations from the relevant developers and executives, all of whom explained that [the Sega Genesis version of] Madden and subsequent editions in the Madden franchise were developed without using Antonick's work."
Antonick has a long battle ahead of him, as EA is probably not willing to relinquish royalties related to its biggest cash-cow.
