In a Nevada lawsuit filed last week against publisher Take-Two interactive, former executive Robert Alexander is suing the gaming giant for $50 million.

The lawsuit is the result of what Alexander claims is a breach of an oral contract. Alexander’s time with the company is long-standing, having been with T2 in some shape and form since 2004. After leaving the company, he formed another distributing company which began to partner with T2.

Unfortunately, T2 founder Ryan Brant’s faux pas with the Securities Exchange Commission dealt him a blow that saw him leaving the company, and eventually the next T2 CEO, Paul Eibeler nullified the verbal contract Brant had made with Alexander.

Ergo: he’s fucked.

Alexander claims in his complaint that Brant had promised him a raft of annual raises, T2 shares and stock options, a $240,000 annual salary and a $25,000 per-month expense allowance.

$25,000 a month on martini lunches and playing real-time Mario Kart at Pebble Beach – right. But then again, what reason would he have to lie? He’s only asking for $50 million dollars.

In other “non BlizzCon related” news, Microsoft has filed a $2 million lawsuit against shipping company DHL over lost Xbox 360 units — 21,600 lost units to be exact. As the story goes, a DHL train carrying butt loads of Xbox 360 consoles derailed in Duke, Texas, causing “impact damage, wetting, pilfering and shortage.”

Microsoft says that DHL is refusing the pony up for damages despite their belief that the company “negligently breached” their duty. Attempts made to contact DHL have been unsuccessful thus far, though I am praying for some ungodly small fine print that reads something like this:

“DHL is not responsible for damages unless all 4 rings on the front of our train light up red upon impact.”

While I am pretty sure DHL and Microsoft are not finding this funny at all, I will glady take this opportunity to coin a new acronym — “Red Ring of Derailment” — RROD for short. You know what they say about karma right?

Sadly, if the train wreck had damaged …. oh I don’t know, 360,000 units, DHL might have been able to convince Microsoft to write it off as an advertising expense.

Source: GamePro

Hillcrest claims that its patent for “a handheld three-dimensional pointing device” and a vague description of a “navigation interface display system that graphically organizes content for display on a television” apparently predates Nintendo’s Wiimote.

On Wednesday, Maryland-based Hillcrest Labs announced that it has filed a patent infringement with the U.S. International Trade Commission, as well as another patent infringement suit in a U.S. District Court in Maryland regarding Nintendo’s Wiimote.

Hillcrest Labs does have a product based on this technology, called The Loop remote (pictured above), based on what the company calls “Freespace” motion control technology. It seems clear that The Loop remote is much different from the Wiimote, and its hard to believe that something so vague as “a 3D pointing device” could actually best Nintendo in a court of law.

Hillcrest has requested Nintendo stop shipping Wiis to the U.S. and reward Hillcrest with unspecified monetary damages. Oh, that should be easy, right Nintendo?

This is just the latest patent infringement suit that Nintendo has been hit with. Just this past July, a federal court in Texas found three Nintendo controllers—the Wii Classic controller, the WaveBird controller and the Gamecube controller—in violation of patents held by Texas-based Anascape. Nintendo has appealed the decision.

Source: news.cnet.com

German videogame site 4players.de claims to be involved in apparent legal battle with Atari stemming from the sites review of “Alone in the Dark”, a multiplatform horror/action game published by Atari due to hit US store shelves on June 24th, 2008.

Keeping in mind that the original article is in German, and it is well beyond the “normal” business hours we would utilize to obtain a comment from Atari, we were able to loosely interpret the following information from the public complaint aired on the German gaming site:

• Atari pulled advertising from site after receiving a less than satisfactory review.
• Atari tried in some way to influence their reporting (review) of the game.
• Atari is claiming that their review is not based on a final copy of the game.
• Atari is claiming some sort of illegal download of the game took place.
• Atari is seeking damages in the form of a monetary value (50,000 euros).
• Site claims in P.S. format that Ubisoft did not pull advertising despite Haze receiving a 66% overall.

Not sure what that last point has to do with the current issue at hand — maybe the website is attempting to show their maturity by kicking a little dirt in the direction of Atari.

You may or may not recall a little debacle about the “Hot Coffee” mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It was a cute little mini-game that allowed virtual you to have virtual sex with your virtual girlfriend. Even though the content was locked away because of the ESRB, it was still on the retail disc.

This was somehow offensive to people, and Rockstar was sued. Now that the lawsuit is settled, all the hypocritical pussies out there can get their slice of the censorship pie with a cash settlement of up to $35. Sweet justice!

I just recently found out about the settlement through a legal notice in the March issue of OXM. It basically states that if you purchased GTA: San Andreas before July 20, 2005, you most likely have a “first edition” disc that has the “Hot Coffee” content on it. If so, you can get in on the class action settlement, with differing amounts of cash depending on your “proof of offense”.

The basic rundown is like so:

I have some major issues with this. First of all, who has kept a receipt for a game they bought in 2005? Basically, nobody is “entitled” to the max amount of “up to $35″. Secondly, just claiming you bought the game is worth up to $5. This whole thing seems like a ploy to get people to jump on the “videogames are bad” bandwagon. Third, these numbers represent the maximum you could receive. The actual amount will be prorated based on the number of people who file a claim.

So the people that were actually “offended” can get a replacement disc, given they still have the game. This I can understand, but at the same time, anyone interested in GTA in the first place should be able to handle some virtual sex (especially when it’s not even in the game unless you want it to be) to offset all the killing. By contrast, the lawyers, who were personally not affected by the game, have claimed a million-dollar fee. Seems a little backwards, doesn’t it?

On top of all that, why would they advertise this in a gaming magazine? I mean, obviously there’s a good chance that the people who played San Andreas are, you know, gamers. They obviously would read about games — that makes sense. The type of people that are that into games that they actually get magazines about them, however, are also the type of people that would see this settlement notice and flip off that page of their magazine.

This brings me to the thing that really fills me with homicidal rage — “Hot Coffee” is a mod. It it completely inaccessible unless you purposely want to see it. On top of that, you can’t see it on the PS2 or Xbox unless you mod your console, WHICH IS ILLEGAL YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! People need to go out of their way to install a mod chip, breaking the law, in order to view this content. Even the PC version required you to violate the software agreement.

This is basically the equivalent of buying a Mustang, pulling out the speed limiter (which is illegal), and then suing Ford because driving really fast was so scary. They had the tools in place to block that, and you purposely circumvented that in order to do whatever you wanted. How exactly was this their fault? Next thing you know there will be a class action lawsuit against Hotmail for allowing porn in my mailbox. The horror!

The bottom line is that we live in a fucked-up country where it is okay to kill people, but not to have sex with them. Blame those Puritan assholes and their crazy feelings for turkey. The U.S. needs to take a cue from Europe and put some more boobies on television. Make love, not war, right?

Anyways, if you are interested in this waste of carbon or want something to shake your fist at, visit the settlement website at www.gtasettlement.com. Part of your legal rights is the ability to say you are not happy with the settlement, in which case you can write to the court with your complaints or comments. An address for said court is conveniently not given.

Activision’s release of “Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s” has spurred a lawsuit from American rock group, The Romantics. Lawsuits are common place these days, however the grounds for the suit against the publisher of the successful video game franchise seems like a stretch.

The Romantics claim that the band commissioned to perform their hit song “What I Like About You” sounded too much like them, resulting in a rendition that is “virtually indistinguishable from the authentic version”.

The lawsuit was filed on November 20th in federal District Court in Detroit. Look out Frank Caliendo, John Madden may be after you next.

Frank Caliendo impersonating John Madden on The Late Show

Via: billboard.com

Sony is being hit hardest where it hurts the most … the wallet.

Citing violations related to the Blu-ray technology, Irvine, California’s Target Technology Company has come out swinging and Sony is left once again trying to soften the blow. Seeking damages, a suit was filed earlier this month targeting Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Pictures, and Sony DADC and claims that products sold and marketed under the Blu-ray lable infringe on a reflective layer material patent the Target Technology Company owns. The patent was filed in April of 2004 and granted in March of 2006.

Target is seeking a permanent injunction which would ultimately prevent Sony from violating their patent rights moving forward, along with damages and multiplied interest due to what they claim to be “deliberate and willful infringement”. All of this leave s us wondering … how much longer can Sony continue to dodge the barrage of legal punches being thrown their way?

Calls to both Sony representatives and Target attorneys have yet to be returned.

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