In re: NCAA Student-Athlete Name & Likeness Licensing Litigation, Northern District of California Judge Claudia Wilken denied Electronic Arts Inc. motion to dismiss multidistrict antitrust litigation alleging that it conspired to deny compensation to former college athletes for use of their likenesses in video games.
Plaintiffs claim that the NCAA wrongly prohibits college players from licensing their images and likenesses for commercial purposes and that Electronic Arts has wrongfully extended that prohibition to former college players.
The court acknowledged that the defendant’s licensing agreements with Collegiate Licensing Co. (CLC) didn’t expressly prohibit payments to former college players. But it found that the conspiracy claims could go forward nonetheless. “Reading antitrust plaintiffs’ allegations . . . in the context of their overall complaint, rather than in isolation,” the court explained, demonstrated “that the actual terms of the licensing agreements do not refute antitrust plaintiffs’ allegations.” The plaintiffs contend that Electronic Arts, CLC and the NCAA have interpreted the prohibition on payment to college athletes as persisting “in perpetuity” and allowing them to enter licensing agreements to use the student-athletes’ images, likenesses and names without ever paying the athletes. A tacit agreement is no less a violation of the antitrust laws than an explicit one.