Madden lawsuit goes to trial

The lawsuit brought against EA by a man claiming to be the original Madden designer, Robin Antonick, will go to trial.

Antonick claims that EA has snubbed him on millions of dollars worth royalties owed on the billion dollar franchise.

His law firm alleges the publisher agreed to pay him for "any derivative works related to the original version of EA Madden, including current annual releases," as laid out in a 1986 contract with EA.

A confusing note is that EA was apparently also required to keep Antonick’s work on the game a secret – a requirement which lawyers for the case say was not met.

“We have very compelling evidence indicating that EA used Mr. Antonick’s ground-breaking code and design elements as the basis for both past and present Madden NFL titles,” said Robert Carey, one of his attorneys at the Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP partner.

“Yet, EA has failed to compensate him as required by his agreement or give him proper credit for his work. We look forward to proving our case at trial, and we are very confident that we will prevail.”

Antonick is also represented by Leonard Aragon of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Stuart Paynter of the Paynter Law Firm.

The original 1988 version of EA’s John Madden Football was released for Apple II, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64, and is cited as the first game to successfully model 11×11 American Football.

The trial is to begin June 17, 2013.