Analyst: Zampella and West Will Not Get Control of Modern Warfare Brand

The lawsuit that links Vince Zampella and Jason West, the founders of Infinity Ward, and rival publishers Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts will probably take quite a bit more time to be solved, but at least one analyst believes that the developers at the center of the affair will not get too much out of it.

Michael Pachter, who is an analyst watching the video game industry for Wedbush Morgan, has told Industry Gamers that, “As it happens, they have never claimed that they ‘own’ the brand; instead, they claim that they were granted creative control over the brand under their employment agreement.”

He added, “These are two completely different things. Their creative control was clearly intended to be in effect only while they were employees, and the day that their employment terminated, their creative control ended.”

The analyst believes that the developer pair would have done better if they only asked the court for the money that they feel Activision owns them for the success seen by the Modern Warfare 2 launch, while accepting to drop any claims linked to ownership of the brand.

With both EA and Activision involved in a number of legal actions with the two developers, it's a good bet that the two companies will reach an agreement outside of court that will also include the future of the pair.

At the moment Zampella and West have created another development studio, called Respawn Entertainment, which has entered into a long-term agreement with Electronic Arts, and they are in the early stages of development for a new game project, presumably a first-person shooter.

Activision has already said that a new Call of Duty game will be launched in the fall of this year, probably in November, but has not offered any details on the actual game experience or on which studio will create it.

In the meantime, fans of the Call of Duty experience can look forward to another DLC map for Black Ops.