Objection! #8: The Case of the Corporate Rivalry

The videogame industry's a big business -- and sometimes, companies don't see eye-to-eye. And what happens when a dispute goes to court, and gamers get their grubby hands on fancy-sounding legal documents? Why, wild, inane, forum-fueled speculation, of course. That's where California-based corporate attorney and GameSpy freelancer Eric Neigher comes in. Objection! is your one-stop destination to learn what all that legalese means in plain English, straight from someone who knows the twisty-turny language of the law.



Intro

Yes folks, here at Objection!, we have only one rule -- and that is: Keep on covering anything having to do with the fallout from Infinity Ward's personnel splitting from Activision to go to EA. It's a lengthy and specific rule, but it is the one rule we cleave to pretty damn scrupulously.

So, as you may have heard, Activision has gone from mere threats to actually suing their crosstown rivals at EA. Well -- not exactly suing them, as much as adding them as defendants in their already existing lawsuit against Jason West and Vince Zampella, the guys who left Infinity Ward to go work for an EA affiliate. While this may seem like just another episode in the ongoing schoolyard slap-fight that has become the Infinity Ward breakdown, this particular wrinkle has brought out some big guns, and it's worth tackling here.

Just as a quick recap before we get into the who, what, and where: You may recall that last year, Infinity Ward's two big chiefs, West and Zampella, were given their walking papers by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in a very public dustup. West and Zampella went on to found their own studio and sued Activision for wrongful termination and stuff of that nature. Activision countersued, alleging that the pair had, among other things, conspired to derail the company and to hijack Infinity Ward employees away from Activision.


Now, Activision is including EA in that conspiracy -- alleging that EA took actions that amounted to inducing West and Zampella (and some other folks) to leave Infinity Ward, and to intentionally sabotage the potential sales of other Activision affiliates, particularly those of internecine rival Treyarch. Hollywood talent agency CAA are also involved, primarily as some sort of middleman, lining up West and Zampella with EA through a meeting in some EA executive's house in San Francisco. The whole thing is kinda convoluted, and I'll get into the details in a second, but what this all amounts to is that Activision is now suing EA for at least $400 million dollars in damages, and wants a court to prevent West, Zampella, EA, CAA, and several other acronyms from ever profiting from Activision trade secrets (please see Objection! #7 for more on what constitutes a trade secret).

Four-hundred million dollars. Good times.

Facts

So, procedurally, what Activision did was file an amended version of their initial lawsuit against West and Zampella, and this time included new defendants like EA. This is totally legal, and was allowed by the court in this particular case because Activision discovered new evidence of wrongdoing by new parties during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. FYI, the "discovery phase" is the part before trial in which the various parties gather information about what actually happened. In case you're used to episodes of Law & Order -- in which some guy miraculously confesses to the crime and the cops discover what really happened within 22 minutes -- actual discovery in the real world takes much, much longer. Thus, when new stuff arises, amendments to complaints are fairly commonplace. For the record, Activsion's pleading is actually what's called a "cross-complaint" (sometimes better known as a countersuit), because they were originally hauled into court by West and Zampella, and then turned around and totally sued them in the face.


Some interesting new fact sets definitely crop up in this amended complaint: first, the fact that West and Zampella were apparently induced to come up to San Francisco (Infinity Ward is in the Los Angeles area) and speak with an EA representative in his home, presumably about leaving Activision and starting their own company within EA. This was, apparently, at least partially orchestrated by an agent with CAA who was himself a former Activision employee. Also of note are a series of text messages that Activision got a hold of (my guess is that they subpoenaed these from their corporate phone provider, assuming West and Zampella were dumb enough to send them on company phones). Some of these implicate West and Zampella in a conspiracy to leave and try to take some Infinity Ward employees with them; others simply imply their dissatisfaction with their positions. But the most damning, from a legal perspective, is a series of text messages in which West -- despite having explicitly stated that he had done so by mistake -- expresses joy at his employees releasing a video for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that killed the traffic for fellow Activision developer Treyarch's promotions for its Call of Duty: World at War downloadable content. He then goes on to encourage further such actions, suggesting that they (Infinity Ward) should "crush and destroy" anything from Treyarch.

The plot thickens.