NFL video game creator loses royalties appeal against EA

US games publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has secured victory against the creator of a video game in a dispute over royalties.

Robin Antonick developed the computer code for the original (1988) “John Madden Football” game for the Apple II computer.

In 1989, Antonick began working for EA on Madden games for the Nintendo and Sega Genesis systems.

But one year later, EA told him to stop working because Nintendo was becoming obsolete and the company had decided on a new direction for the Sega game, hiring Park Place Productions.

Just months after this, EA released a Madden game for Sega, and between 1992 and 1996 EA released Madden games for Sega and Super Nintendo.

Under Antonick’s 1986 contract with EA, “a custom computer software program known as John Madden Football” designed for the “Apple [II] family of computers” was defined as the “work”.

It also provided that Antonick would receive royalties on any “derivative work”, defined as “any computer software program or electronic game which … constitutes a derivative work of the work within the meaning of the US copyright law”.

Antonick didn’t receive any royalties for the Madden games on the Sega or Super Nintendo, which EA assured him were not derivative works.

In 2011, Antonick brought the claim against EA, seeking contract damages in the form of unpaid royalties.

He argued that Park Place had copied his code to meet the demanding deadline for the first Sega game.

In 2014, a jury at the US District Court for the Northern District of California found that the Sega games were “derivative works”, but the court backed EA because it held that Antonick had not provided sufficient evidence of copyright infringement.

It said that neither the source code used for the Apple II Madden game nor the Sega Madden game was in evidence.

Antonick appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which on Tuesday, November 22 affirmed the district court’s judgment in favour of EA.

On Antonick’s Sega claims, the panel held that there was not sufficient evidence.

The panel also held that the district court did not err in dismissing the creator’s derivative work claims for the Nintendo games, “because the Apple II and Super Nintendo processors were not in the same microprocessor family”, as defined by the contract.

It also affirmed the district court’s conclusion that the jury “could not have determined plaintiff’s damages from the alleged breach of contract to a reasonable certainty”.

The contract also gave EA a licence to create derivative works using certain tools designed by Antonick (development aids). It provided that the parties would “negotiate in good faith” for “further licences if EA wanted to use the aids to create non-derivative works”.

But the court held that Antonick had offered no evidence of purported damages arising from the claim that EA had used development aids to create “non-derivative works without seeking a negotiated licence”.