A district judge has cleared a class action lawsuit against Electronic Arts this week, which means it should eventually become a jury trial.
The class action suit claims EA illegally increased the price of the Madden NFL series after it won exclusive rights to the NFL license, in 2005.
Any purchaser of a Madden game from 2005 until now is eligible to register as a plaintiff in the wide-ranging suit.
In 2004, Take-Two released NFL2K5 for just $19.95, taking on the behemoth Madden, which was forced to drop its prices to $29.95, down from the standard $49.99.
EA won the exclusive NFL license the next season and returned Madden prices to $50, and eventually $60 when the Xbox 360 and PS3 were launched.
Says plaintiff lawyer Steve Berman (via GI):
“Consumers now have a legal standing to demand that EA refund consumers millions of dollars it made from Madden NFL and other sports titles through what we contend was an illegal price-gouging scheme.
“We believe EA forced consumers to pay an artificial premium on Madden NFL videogames. We intend to prove that EA could inflate prices on their sports titles because these exclusive licenses restrained trade and competition for interactive sports software.”
Result for: district judge
Yesterday we reported that the jury trial for the case of Matthew Crippen had been delayed, after the presiding judge took 30 minutes to lecture the prosecution.
Today, the prosecution has dismissed the case, after just hours, “based on fairness and justice.”
Prosecutor Allen Chiu says: “The government has decided to dismiss the indictment.”
Crippen was on trial for allegedly modding Xbox 360 consoles to be able to play pirated games and homebrew.
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez started the trial off yesterday with a 30-minute rant complaining about the prosecution and the government’s case, with his main concerns being the prosecution’s “star” witnesses.
The two witnesses in the case had both potentially broken the law, making them less credible. The first,Entertainment Software Association investigator Tony Rosario, had video of Crippen modding consoles in his home in L.A. Those videos, however, were taped secretly, in violation of California’s strict privacy laws.
Microsoft security employee Ken McGrail was the second witness, the man who analyzed the consoles that were seized from Crippen’s home. McGrail, however, had admitted under oath to modifying the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 back when he was in college.
Crippen was charged with two counts of breaking the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA and faced up to 10 years in prison.
The 28-year-old says he will finally be able to go back to school, needing just one more year to get his degree from Cal State Fullerton.
Result for: district judge
Until March, Theflyonthewall.com posted research reports and press releases on its website, usually minutes before the banks the headlines came from were even shared the reports with their clients.
In March however, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled that the site “engaged in systematic misappropriation,”, making money and getting a “free ride” from analyst moves which usually move stock prices positively or negatively.
The banks that brought the case were Merrill Lynch, Barclays and Morgan Stanley which also tried to ban the site from using their research reports.
However, TFOTW’s appeal has gained some legs today, with both Google and Twitter backing the site, saying blocking immediate news dissemination is “obsolete” and “wrong.”
Reads the filing: “News reporting always has been a complex ecosystem, where what is ‘news’ is often driven by certain influential news organizations, with others republishing or broadcasting those facts — all to the benefit of the public.”
Both companies say if the court’s decision is upheld, the banks will go after other sites that offer real-time news updates in the financial markets.
