By Ronald Katz (August 27, 2018, 1:52 PM EDT) -- The video game manufacturer Electronic Arts Inc., in addition to portraying current National Football League teams in its highly successful "Madden" video games, used to portray what EA referred to as "historic" teams. Retired NFL players filed a class action complaint in the Northern District of California against EA for misappropriating their rights of publicity. On Aug. 17, the district court judge denied the plaintiffs' motion for class certification on the grounds that "EA's potential liability to any former NFL player simply cannot be determined on a class-wide basis" because "whether each player has a claim or not turns on the specific characteristics of that player's identity and whether he can be identified by virtue of how those characteristics have been reflected in his avatar." This holding not only misconstrues Ninth Circuit law on this point, but also ignores the very nature of a "historic" team....
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