SCEA is Suing Kevin Butler

Court documents have surfaced suggesting that Sony Computer Entertainment of America is in the process of suing Bridgestone and the advertising company Wilcat Creek, Inc - whose president just so happens to be Jerry Lambert aka Kevin Butler - for a recent advertisement. The ad in question shows Lambert playing Mario Kart Wii for the Bridgestone Tire Company.

The lawsuit was filed on September 11, 2012 not long after the ad surfaced on the internet. The court documents state that the lawsuit was filed over an "Intellectual Property - Trademark." What this means for Sony and our favorite Vice President is unknown, but it looks like we won't be seeing him in any PlayStation ads anytime soon. The documents can be found below.

Summary of Lawsuit


Court filing 1

Court filing 2

SCEA is Suing Kevin Butler

Wow how u gonna do Butler like that

LLosing respect for Sony more and more

Probably violated a part of the contract.

probably this

he'll make all that money right back being Nintendos new !!boy

I think his ads, in large part, are responsible for keeping the PS3 competitive in the US.

It sucks it comes to this. I wonder what grounds they have if he wasn't acting as Kevin Butler... Is his face contracted exclusively to Sony?

As others said, he was playing a Wii which probably breached his contract with Sony. He probably wasn't allowed to do anything with Nintendo or Microsoft and doing the Mario Kart Wii !! would breach that.

It's fine, though, because he may lose some money here but he'll make it back somewhere else.

Yeah.. Isn't because of GT, GOW, UC, Infamous, LBP etc.

It's because a guy did commercials, that's why PS3 was competitive. [pic]

thought he could just leave huh [pic]

well.....still got psp marcus

How is Sony losing on suing because of this? Lambert/Butler has a contract with Sony and his whole thing is ads with him advertising how awesome Sony games are and whatnot. Then a video shows up of him playing a !!ing WII game?!?!!

I'm sure that violates his contract in some way shape or form.

Should have never let him get away in the first place. Jerry Lambert/Kevin Butler was the greatest ad campaign in the history of Playstation, and second greatest in the history of Sony period. (First greatest was the Walkman series campaign starting in the late 90s.) Why would they let him go? I get the need to stay fresh, but they tried to fix what wasn't broken. Now they're mad (rightfully so) he did an ad that incidentally involved him using a Wii. It's not like he was doing it directly for Nintendo. Sony handled the campaign horribly toward the tail end of it. After that E3 speech it kind of fizzled out, then it seemed like they just got bored with it. @IronMaiden don't deny that the Kevin Butler campaign alongside the "It Only Does Everything" theme wasn't hugely responsible for increasing awareness. It sure as hell beat the weird babies with all black eyes !! that Sony had going on before that.

meh sony and its counterproductive lawsuits continues...reminds me of the time they sued some people that taught their robot dogs to dance which lead to a huge increase in sales and now this....they are suing him for copy right infringement....seriously dont see how they could win this being he wasnt even playing the character kevin butler in the ad he has been in tons of bridgestone commercials...sony fails once again

I think he means in terms of the Ads giving interest to those games......[pic]

stupid shyt altogether

[pic]

Are people really asking why Sony would sue? [pic]

That's like Nike sayin it's cool if LeBron wears some Questions.

I understand Sony side but he is a charecter whose likeness happens to be that off the person they are sueing. It comes down to if he is a contracted charecter who looks a certain way fro their product. Like looking like a suited exec is what they trademark with the combover but if that same look is in the wii commercial they have a case but if not its just a loss. But Sony has been very litigious lately

He's not even playing in the commercial. It was set to 2 players and the other 2 people had the controllers in their hands. He just said what they were doing.

sony doesnt give their customers what they want. no backwards compat on the ps3 anymore and no custom soundtracks... !!em