U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin has denied the NCAA’s request to dismiss a class action suit [URL=http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/07/22/video-game-licensing-key-issue-former-ucla-star-leads-new-lawsuit-against-ncaa]filed last year[/URL] by ex-UCLA star basketball player Ed O’Bannon which alleged that the collegiate association misused the likenesses of college athletes in a variety of licensed materials, including videogames.

[URL=http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/news?slug=dw-obannon020810&prov=yhoo&type=lgns]Rivals.com notes[/URL] that the ruling will now open the door for the discovery process to begin, which could shed some light on the inner workings of the NCAA. Lawyer Jon King, a Partner at Hausfeld LLP—one of the law firms handling the class action suit—thinks such discovery could be a big deal:

[INDENT]This is a truly historic day – to our knowledge, no one has ever gotten behind the scenes to examine how student-athletes’ current and future rights in their images are divided up and sold.

[/INDENT]It was also noted in the article that the Hausfeld firm is attempting to link the O’Bannon case with a similar class-action suit [URL=http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/05/06/ncaa-football-lawsuit-brings-more-legal-trouble-ea-sports]filed by ex-NCAA football player Samuel Keller[/URL].

If O’Bannon et al were to win the case, Rivals offered that such a judgment could “lead to former student-athletes getting a cut of the multi-billion dollar college sports revenue pool and dramatically impact the way college athletics operates.”

[url=http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/02/09/o%E2%80%99bannon-suit-against-ncaa-moves-forward]More...[/url]