In the midst of Zampella/West versus Activision getting all hot and heavy, Wedbush Securities analyst and legal expert Michael Pachter has said the former Infinity Ward heads don’t stand a chance of taking the Modern Warfare 2 brand with them.
“West and Zampella have no prayer of obtaining control of the brand,” he tells IndustryGamers. “They can claim that they were granted creative control, and there is a reasonable chance that they would prevail, but they lost that control when their employment was terminated. If they can prove their termination was wrongful, they will be entitled to damages, but there is no legal basis to award ownership of the brand to them. They could conceivably change their complaint and seek reinstatement as employees, but I haven’t seen any demands from them to make that happen.
“As it happens, they have never claimed that they ‘own’ the brand; instead, they claim that they were granted creative control over the brand under their employment agreement. These are two completely different things. Their creative control was clearly intended to be in effect only while they were employees, and the day that their employment terminated, their creative control ended (made clear by Bobby’s alleged comment that “[i]t’s impossible for you guys to get fired”). Since they think that they were wrongfully terminated, they are pursuing a claim for damages, which would be the appropriate remedy.”
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