Hot Legal Issues In Video Games

With this and intensified business competition has come a rise in contested legal issues. To start, music retailers have been decreasing their shelf-display space for music products and instead increasing their video-games sections. What video-game manufacturers claim on product packaging, as well as the effect of shelf placement at retail stores, were at the center of a suit filed by eGames. In an unfair-competition complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, eGames ' which claims sales of 16 million video games and more than $160 million in income ' alleged that MPS Multimedia overstated in packaging the contents of MPS video games, such as for mahjongg and solitaire.

The district court denied eGames' summary judgment motion on a false-advertising claim. MPS didn't deny that it had made false claims (while stating it had corrected the products packaging). But the district court focused on the retail-store placement of video games, explaining: “Significantly, however, defendants have provided evidence that eGames is not likely to be injured as a result of the false claims. For example, defendants have provided evidence that eGames and defendants' competing games are not likely to be sold side by side. According to defendants, each retail outlet displays and locates games in a different fashion; there is no consistency with respect to how games are shelved. Moreover, games are often disorganized because of customers picking them up to look at the package and not putting them back where they were originally located. Thus, according to defendants, because eGames' and defendants' games are not likely to be sold side by side, the false claims on defendants' games' packaging would have no effect on eGames' games.” eGames Inc. v. MPS Multimedia Inc., 04-5463.