EMI Sues Electronic Arts

Officials from Electronic Arts have confirmed that the company is being sued by the EMI Group over claims of copyright infringement in the company’s sports titles. The suit, filed in federal court in New York on Wednesday, claims a number of the company’s recent sports titles, such as Madden NFL 2004, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and MVP Baseball 2004 use songs that "embody copyrighted musical compositions that EMI owns, co-owns, administers or otherwise controls." According to Electronic Arts representatives the entire lawsuit is related to a single song that samples lyrics from another song (one presumably owned by EMI). EMI claims in the suit that Electronic Arts sought licenses throughout 2003 from EMI for the use of certain songs for its sport games, but then released the games before the licenses were granted. Source: Reuters