According to the composer of UNLV’s fight song, “Win With The Rebels,” EA has been using the song in their college sports titles without permission. GamePolitics is reporting that Gerald Willis, who claims to own the copyright to both the music and lyrics for the fight song, filed a suit in the U.S. District Court late last month seeking damages.
The song has appeared in at least ten titles published by EA since 2006, including baseball, football and basketball games, which are named in the suit. Willis is seeking an injunction aganst EA and $150,000 in statutory damages1 per violation (read: game) or all of EA’s profits from the games, whichever the courts deem more appropriate.
It’s a pretty straightforward case, from the looks of it. Willis’ copyright was registered in 1990 and he is the sole holder of it, so it appears that EA may have dropped the ball on this one. It will almost certainly settle out of court but I can’t help hoping otherwise. With as fiercely as the company has been battling piracy of late, it would be amusing indeed to see them get slapped with an infringement penalty.
1 Statutory damages are awarded in lieu of profits in cases where it may be difficult to calculate how many instances in which the copyright may have been infringed.
