14 DAY TRIAL // A judge has ruled that an anti-trust lawsuit launched against publisher Electronic Arts by former players from the National Collegiate Athletic Association can go ahead and dismissed the company’s attempt to have the legal action thrown out.
Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, California, has ruled on the issue and dismissed the defense from EA, which claimed that the licensing agreement it had with the NCAA was fair and that it did not attempt to “to price-fix, boycott, or otherwise refuse to deal” with the athletes.
The judge stated, “can fairly be read to evidence a ‘meeting of the minds’ between EA and the other defendants not to compensate former student-athletes, where such a contract would interfere with the student-athletes’ existing agreements with the NCAA.”
Electronic Arts has previously tried to have the same lawsuit thrown out, but it seems that the legal action is destined to go to trial and might end up costing the game company no less than 1 billion dollars (788.4 million Euro).
For the NCAA series of games, which included simulation for both basketball and American football, EA Sports has long used in-game characters that were pretty close to real-world college athletes, but it has not compensated them for that.
After graduating, a number of athletes took Electronic Arts to court over the issue.
It’s not clear when the actual trial might start and how it might affect EA’s plans to release more NCAA Football titles.
The EA Sports division is one of the most important for Electronic Arts, publishing franchises like Madden NFL and FIFA that managed to deliver solid sales year after year.
The new NFL-themed video games will be delivered late during August while FIFA 13 is expected to arrive in late September with a host of significant improvements over last year’s installment.