Kevin Butler’s Sony lawsuit settled out of court

Sony didn’t play this very well, look like jerks imo.

Kevin Butler was an awesome chars tho, and kudos to Mr. Lambert.

Possibly Sony’s best advertising campaign, now ruined.

Speak for yourself – To me it looks like he breached his contract and Sony did what they had to do. That seems to be the general sentiment on Reddit today as well. He played a cool character, but what did he expect doing a Wii promotion for “a tire ad?”

Um, he is an actor and was doing an acting job.

He wasn’t in “charecter” and wasn’t either “Kevin Butler” or representing Sony. The company was running a deal with Wiis. It wasn’t like it was some sort of evil plot against Sony. There was no clause saying the guy can’t get work just because he worked in a Sony add.

@3 – Come on, you know some people around here will never think Sony are anything but the bad guy in every situation, no matter what the reality of it was.

lol

“There was no clause saying the guy can’t get work just because he worked in a Sony add.”
…Did you even read past the title? You do know what breach of contract is, right?

spawning

Nice try Gek.

They settled this out of court, likly due to Sony paying him off to save face. And the current deal they have includes such a clause/agrement but that clearly wasn’t the case beforehand. He appeared in a comercial(that is what actors do, they act). What Lambert had actual said was, “Lambert admitted that his appearance in a Bridgestone advert -in which he was seen playing a Wii- may have caused confusion as to which brand he is actually promoting.” That obviously isn’t what you are taking it to be.

This is what it is, face value. An actor that the public associates his face to Sonys PS3 did a comercial for bridgestone. That comercial was advertising a promotional tie in with Nintendo. Sony wanted to stop that, makes sense. But did Lambert actualy do anything wrong or admit to doing anything wrong?

Nope.

Sony just wanted to make it go away, and they did that.

Oh man, ignorance is running loose here.
“Sony paid Lambert”
Lolwut? Try harder next time to fail at arguments.
Do you know how a actor who played james bond was barred from wearing that look in any other film. Its a breach of contact.

OG, proving he’s one of the most dense posters on the site. Hows about you actually read the source, you’ll look less stupid:

“According to the settlement, Lambert acknowledged that his contract with Sony precluded him from promoting or endorsing competing game systems. Lambert also acknowledged that at the very least, confusion was created in the minds of some consumers who believed he was portraying the Kevin Butler character in both the PlayStation and Bridgestone commercials.”

Let me break it down for you:
-Lambert says Sony were right.
-Lambert says he was wrong.
-Lambert says there was a clause preventing him from doing such an ad.

They settled out of court on their terms and their terms alone, they didnt pay off Lambert as you suggest. But guess when its about Sony the actual facts just dont matter any more, they HAVE to be the big bad company who is always in the wrong.

aaand booom…congrats og. you said sony and didn’t combine it with awesome…tsss.

awesony

I stand 100% behind what I said.

I know Poly, right, I should also think about getting the word Sony tattooed on my butt too.

i don’t think they were implying for you to idolize sony. He was simply saying what the article said where Lambert confessed he was wrong. you were suggesting he was right as if he didn’t have a contract he went against.

Lex, I think it was all part of the settlement out of court.

If it was open and shut, Sony would have pursued it. I think Sony just wanted it to go away. I think Sony bought his statement. And I stand by that.

I have extra tin foils hats, if ya would like one?

I’m thinking it’s probably a bit of both in this case.

Sony managed to clarify the terms of their relationship, without a nasty lawsuit that would undoubtedly cast them as Goliath, and Lambert gets to walk with a slap on the wrist.

Most likely both just pay their own legal fees and that’s that.

If it was open and shut, Sony would have pursued it.

Why, exactly? Please do share your legal knowledge of settlements. In fact, please do share your legal knowledge. It never occurred to you that even if Sony’s case had merit, which it does, that they would gain nothing from going out of their way to destroy him, if he’s willing to settle? I know you like to think of them as an evil empire that has nothing better to do than spend all of their money crushing innocent actors (so THAT’S why they don’t have any R&D money! SONY’S GOING DOWN!!), but if was willing to say he did something wrong and they were willing to make the suit go away, why wouldn’t they? Ending things amicably benefits both parties.

The levels of self delusion are amazing. Guy says he was indeed bound by contract to not do an ad, gets a 2 year restriction and has to clear any video game ads he does after that with Sony, Sony have no obligation to do anything. Internet nutcase sticks his fingers in his ears refusing to accept and makes up his own story based off nothing, calls anyone who doesnt play his dumb little conspiracy a fanboy, acts like the big bad internet people are ganging up on him for no reason.

Remember when OG wasnt a retarded fanboy troll? it seems like such a long time ago. But i guess when you’ve got a rage boner for a hardware company, you cant help but be a dishonest douche bag. Must be what “Nintendo magic” does to a person.

@Clupula
Because Sony dont end things amicably, they destroy everything like the evil cartoon villains they are, obviously. Only OG and Poly with the use of their Nintendo magic can stop such an evil.

…Or, you know, you should put about as much stock into anything OG says as you would have BDH a few years ago. They’re pretty much the same person at this point.

it’s like always. an opinion not pro sony per se pops up. i personally cannot see anything per se anti sony in it either but some guys obviously can…or choose to.

instant attacks. by the same bunch.

if you really cannot see that you guys are permanently acting like that…well then it’s just hopeless. it doesn’t make you look sexy, that’s for sure.

i think what dsb said fits best. it’s a bit of both. like always with these things….called agreements. a foreign word for some. i know.
something they want to fight. no agreement ever. death before agreement.

@clupula: what’s your legal knowlege then, what’s dragons, what’s gekis? have you seen the original contract? have you talked to lambert? no? then all this is just speculation anyway.

both parties are having an interest. they talk and might agree before a trial. out of court. both knowing it would be tough to win. if only one party thinks they will definiteley win, they will go for the trial. they win and will get the reputation. this clearly wasn’t the case here. since it was sonys interest to stop this, it makes sense to speculate that sony bought lambert. statements like the ones he made now are a part of the deal. i personally think that’s a shit attitude from lambert AND sony. in the end their lawyers dealed this for them anyway though.

it doesn’t really matter who bought who here anyway. this indeed is an agreement and we will never find out. it’s all in the contract they now have made regarding this issue. if we will find out what ‘really’ happened we will see this scenario repeating so in reality we’ll never know. that’s ok. that’s how this works.

it’s ok to say ‘i think lambert got paid. it’s ok to say ‘i think lambert paid sony’. what’s not ok is to say ‘you suck because you don’t have the same opinion as me’…this is what’s happening here and it didn’t come from og.

you gus are witch hunting anything even slightly not pro sony and you should realize it and then just change it. it’s not too late. if you bring the ndf ‘hammer’ now. fine. move on. make me smile.

edit: ahhh the ‘nintendo magic’ already happened here i see. well that didn’t take long.

while we’re at it: remember that peta/mario tanooki suit stuff. remember nintendos reaction to it? a statement: “mario isn’t wearing a tanooki suit. it’s a costume.”
stuff settled with nintendo magic.

anyway, sony showed with this that they aren’t as ‘cool’ as their vita ads ‘are’. you guys just represent that.

Oh! Poly giving lessons to others on agreements and instant attacks and coolness?
World is going to end soon.
OH SAVE US NINTY MAGIC!

“Oh! Poly giving lessons to others on agreements and instant attacks and coolness?
World is going to end soon.
OH SAVE US NINTY MAGIC!”

…well look at you.
what is there i can do? really, tell me. i want to know…but first, seriously. look at you. then we can talk.

The “Pro-Sony fanboi” arguments here are wrong in this case and you’re really just arguing against nothing. First comment on the article is negative towards Sony, when there is really no reason to be. Other people have tried to explain why…

It’s quite clear by all information available that Lambert is in the wrong on this one. People need to learn that businesses don’t run completely on goodwill and sometimes have to pull people/companies up on the contracts that bind their working relationship. Sony handled this better than some of their other cases. It’s ended quietly which is good for both.

it ended well for both and this is good indeed.

“Sony didn’t play this very well, look like jerks imo.”

this is negative towards sony. but in the end it´s also an opinion. it probably only means: sony shouldn´t have bothered about it in the first place. poster described and clarified his thoughts in the next posts.

being all mad just made them look a bit silly in this case. they even kinda ruined their great butler campaign themselves with it. i also think their reaction wasn´t very clever. don´t you think.
they should´ve made a funny comment to the public, talk to lambert behind closed doors, find an agreement for the future and move on.

that´s why i brought uo the nintendo/peta reference…you almost always have a choice HOW to react to things.

poster #1 kind of said he thought they overreacted a bit. that made them look like jerks in the end…

but if you say something like this you clearly are against sony. against everything they do. always. for life. i get that. but it´s getting old.

lol.

@24, This is what I don’t understand about gamers sometimes…

“being all mad just made them look a bit silly in this case. they even kinda ruined their great butler campaign themselves with it. i also think their reaction wasn´t very clever. don´t you think.
they should´ve made a funny comment to the public, talk to lambert behind closed doors, find an agreement for the future and move on.”

This isn’t some favour Lambert has done for Sony… it’s not a deal done between friends. This is business, you can’t simply let someone break the terms of their contract and say “oh hey don’t worry about it but don’t do it again.”

In this case, there really is no need for a negative opinion of Sony though, they have done what they had to do and still let Lambert walk away without any damage to his name. They are however, still in a legal case with Bridgestone.

What people are trying to point out is that negativity towards Sony over this, and what they’re basing it on, is really quite unfounded.

I think you are stretching the imagination a bit now OG. When this first came out people were quick to dismiss it. Sony does seem to have had a decent legal claim, hence this outcome. Could they have handled it better, sure, but to claim they paid him off to get this result is ridiculous.

Look at the stuff beyond this article, he has admitted he was wrong to do this based on his contract with Sony. So yes your comments at the end of @9 are incorrect.

i think you don´t understand what i was trying to say here. BECAUSE it is business and because it´s also about an image you have as a corp, it sometimes is more clever to settle things a different way than fighting the full force sue em kind of way. it´s strategy. it´s about corporate identity, about an image, marketing. they´ve build up butler to represent them in a huge, successful campaign. then they sue lambert. makes them look like jerks. no matter how you look at it. they ruined their own campaign and corporate identity with this. that´s why i think it wasn´t clever. you can disagree with that point of view of course, no problem, but imho it would´ve been much more clever to make a funny pun in an interview, then find an agreement with him for the future behind closed doors and just move on…business also is like politics sometimes and stuff like this happens all the time. diplomacy is needed. they´ve hurt themselves more in the end this way. that´s just my opinion and it is not negative towards sony per se in any way.

DrDamn: in business agreements you are making new contracts about your agreement. lambert saying these things after a signed agreement is just part of the deal really. it always is. but again. everyone of us here is speculating anyway. i think it´s pretty naive to think that because lambert is making these statements now, after their negotiation, proves he was wrong in the first place. it´s not stretching the imagination. it´s business deals guys…

@Poly, That’s ridiculous. I don’t understand how you’re not getting this…

Sony didn’t ask to be in this situation… Lambert should never have done the advert, it’s really as simple as that. He is the one and only person that has caused any real or potential damage to Kevin Butler, the ad campaign and Sony’s investment to that image.

And to promote a competing product, even indirectly through another company, would usually be a no no in most contracts unless Sony have a terrible legal/contract team. You are trying to oversimplify business far too much here.

@27
How do you know they didn’t try and find an agreement behind closed doors first? What would you expect them to do if that didn’t work?

@Poly
It is ridiculous if Sony are continuing to pursue Bridgestone. They can’t pay him to say this if it strengthens the case against someone else. This is a legal agreement and resolution.

@viral:
maybe, maybe not. was he lambert or butler in the ad?
what was part of the sony contract what wasn´t?
it´s not as easy as you make it to be.

also, like i said, sometimes it´s better to walk a different path than sueing or threatening to sue even IF you are right. in this case it would have been imho.

@DrDamn: sure, that could´ve been the case and in that case sonys reaction would´ve been legit. usually though they (every corp not only sony) go all out with this kind of stuff in official staements sayig they wanted to find a way of agreement out of court first but it didn´t work. so they have no other choice to prove they are right.

we´ll never now. we speculate. the way this discussuion goes now is great though.
that also was my point here.
sharing opinionsí s cool. fanboy calling is not.

it doesn´t strengthen the other case.
it´s sony vs bridgestone because sony believes bridgestone stole their intelectual property: k. butler.
i think sony will lose this hands down if bridgestone haven´t been complete fools with their contracts.
lambert has a contract with sony: lambert is butler.
lambert has a contract with bridgestone: lambert is lambert.
sony has no contract with bridgestone obviously.
it´s simple as that.
lambert admitting (now) that his appearance in another advert may have caused confusion as to which brand he is actually promoting, has nothing to do with sony vs bridgestone. this is sony vs lambert…
bridgestone has made a contract with lambert, not the fictional k. butler. i am sure you wont find the name butler in their contract…so what lambert says about butler now is irrelevant. bridgestone will always say they wanted lambert in their spot.
it´s a mess. it´s bullshit. it´s business.

@33
So the actor himself admitting it may have caused confusion doesn’t help their case? Of course it does.

it doesn´t if the contract bridgestone has with lambert doesn´t say anything about butler (and i´m sure it doesn´t).

sony vs lambert because of a possible butler in bridgestone is sortet now: agreement.

now it´s sony vs. bridgestone
if there´s no butler in the contract, there is no butler in the spot.

they bought lambert not butler…

it really is that simple.

@32, I really don’t understand what your point is. You keep saying Sony should have walked a different path… They did, they settled. They didn’t have to but they did.

@34, I think you’re wasting your time on this one…

@35, It’s really not that simple… Otherwise there would never have been a court case in the first place.

Not that I expect a certain person here to understand the “logic”, since protecting a friend is obviously a more important thing, logic goes to hell.
Keep floating man. Contact me when you want to get down from the high place.

Sony123456 should be banned for continously derailing topics, flooding and being a moron.

Sorry, I went to bed.

For what it is worth Poly is right.

I didn’t claim to have inside info. I was simply speculating.

In my mind everything after the new agreement needs to be taken with a grian of salt. Think about it.

IF IF IF(did you guts get that?) If Sony “settled” out of court buy paying Lambert(and tbh an exchange of money seems reasonable), then it stands to reason that part of THAT agreement is for Lambert to shoulder “blame” publicly in an attempt at smoothing things over.

What part of that theory has holes? It is just a therory after all, again speculation. And it is pretty solid in my mind.

What actualy happend in the “settlement”? I don’t know. I don’t know if the terms have been made public. But the things you guys don’t know what happend either.

Their obvously was an agreement reached. With a bit of logic, what I laid out makes sense. Lambert sudenly changing his mind for now reason doesn’t.

I really don’t think Sony had much to stand on anyways. Like Poly tried pointing out Bridgstone didn’t buy Butler, they bought Mr. Lambert.

Next Sony is trying to sue in a Cali court Bridgstone for “poaching” Kevin Butler. Basicly Sony doesn’t feel that Mr. Lambert has the right to work in comercials.

i am just trying to explain my point of view. nothing else. what´s so weird about that? your logic doesn´t make any more sense than mine. again: it´s speculation anyway. we don´t have insider infos here so we speculate. for fun. or not? no need to say stuff like: “Not that I expect a certain person here to understand the “logic”, “think you´re wasting your time on this one”
“(he´s)…just defending a friend” “get down from the high place” “keep floating”
i think i made my point pretty clear. you do not agre with it. that´s fine! but do you want to discuss or just trashtalk? it´s two different types of conversation. i can do both but i´d prefer to have a discussion.
what about you?

Goodness! You fucking sony guys are just as bad as the ninty guys. Console loyalists are so ridiculous. Grow up, seriously.

The legalities here are completely separate from whether this was a good idea on Sonys part. You have to be very, very careful with legalities. Paying someone off to say there was something in a contract which wasn’t actually there is very stupid idea. Bridgestone can’t just say we had a contract with Lambert and not with Butler. That doesn’t stand up.

Right now Sony are going forward with a lawsuit in the state of California against Bridgstone. Their hook: they claim that Bridgstone bought Butler. And look at the headline on this page. It doesn’t say Mr. Lambert, it says Butler. Surely VG247 isn’t confused as to the score here. They are just trying to wind people up. The same type of thing has been happening all over the web.

Because Mr. Lamberts face is so recognizable as a “Sony Guy” it is tuff. I mean the man is the face of the PS3. Given the delicate situation, it wouldn’t suprise me at all if Mr. Lambert was paid. It could be legealy worded several ways. Like in compensation for projected loss of work(pressuming you don’t see his face in any other adds on TV).

If I was Sony I would have bought him out completly from day one. I would have had him the payroll, and heading around the nation doing live apperances. His work for Sony was priceless.

Long Live Play Pew Pew Pew

“Goodness! You fucking sony guys are just as bad as the ninty guys. Console loyalists are so ridiculous. Grow up, seriously.”

Worse really. Because speaking for Manu, Poly, Dr.Damn, MonkeyGourmet, Dave Cook, Pat Garrett, myself(and I am sure many others here) that own the WiiU…we also own(and game on) other, non Nintendo systems. I own Nintendo systems, I like Nintendo games. But just last night I spent four hours playing XB360. Today I will prolly play more Guild Wars 2 on PC.

So the folks I just mentioned aren’t really Console Loyalist at all. We aren’t crazy, not fanboys. Just sticking up for one of the systems that we enjoy.

Good to know there are so many legal experts with special insider information here on the web. Next time I have a dispute with my neighbour I know where to come for free legal advice.

JM

@oldergamer

i still don’t understand why you keep supporting the argument that he got paid off. why would sony go after him in the first place if they thought this would give negative publicity and then turn around and pay him to save face? lmao do u see how ridiculous that sounds. he breached a contract and sony went after him to make sure he doesn’t go around doing it again. honestly lambert was dumb in a way. after 3 years of showing up in ads for sony playstation as soon as someone puts wii controller in ur hand to do an ad alarm bells should have gone off in his head. o well i hope sony continue to use him for ps4 because the current agreement is he cannot show up in ads for their competitors.

@OG
Just requiring something posted higher up …
“Lambert acknowledged that his contract with Sony precluded him from promoting or endorsing competing game systems”

@43, What makes you think Lambert is the one who got paid in all this? Lambert isn’t suing Sony, it’s the other way around… Sony could have just dropped the lawsuit completely if they thought there was no chance of winning.

Instead, they’re having to do nothing and Lambert is the one with new legal obligations to follow. Thjat doesn’t exactly sound like a case that fell in favour of Lambert.

@46, Who is trying to be a legal expert here? Do you see anyone discussing the ins and outs of the actual case or the information that we have access to?

Shockingly, some people might actually work with contracts on a daily basis and know what they’re talking about… shock!