The NFL Players Association was recently ordered to pay $7 million in compensatory damages and $21 million in punitive damages to retired football players who claimed they were excluded from lucrative marketing deals. The class action claimed the “Madden” interactive football games, and deals involving sports card and sponsorships, intentionally scrambled images of retired players to avoid paying royalties. Active players received royalties for their images, but retired players’ images were scrambled. Now normally that might be a key question of fact to be determined by a jury. Unfortunately, there was a smoking gun! Someone at NFLPA wrote to Electronic Arts, publisher of the popular Madden games, explaining that unless they scrambled the retired players’ images, payments would be required. Oops.
Insights at the intersection of digital and mobile technology, innovation and the law