Davis filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Electronic Arts Inc., which develops the popular Madden games. Davis claims EA has made millions over the years by using avatars that look like him and 6,000 other retired players without their consent. He wants the court to declare the case a class-action suit and is seeking more than $5 million in damages.
Until recently, Madden included a feature with vintage teams, such as Davis' 1979 Tampa Bay Bucs. This allowed video-game users to pit old teams against each other or against modern units. Madden stopped including the vintage teams last year and didn't add them to the games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles.
Current players are paid licensing fees by EA. It doesn't release sales figures on particular games, but last fiscal year, which end March 21, 2010, the company reported $3.7 billion in revenue.
Other EA lawsuits in recent years include:
In May 2009, Sam Keller, a former quarterback for the University of Nebraska and Arizona State, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of student-athletes against EA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and its licensing arm, the Collegiate Licensing Company. He argued they have illegally profited from games that use the images of college football and basketball players.
In the 2005 edition of the game, Keller's name was not on the Arizona State quarterback's jersey, but the game's player weight, height, skin tone and home state mirrored the star quarterback's real-life stats.
"We signed a paper at the beginning of college saying we couldn't benefit from our name," Keller told The New York Times last year after he filed the lawsuit. "So why was the NCAA turning a blind eye to this and allowing EA Sports to take our likeness and make big bucks off it?"
In March 2010, Keller's case was consolidated with a case filed by Edward O'Bannon, a former University of California, Los Angeles, basketball player who sued the NCAA and CLC. He claimed student-athletes are forced to sign forms and follow restrictions that deny them compensation for the use of their likeness in video games -- even after college.
