Here's another lawsuit to help fill your weekly quota of legal drama. This one was filed by the Entertainment Software Association against the Chicago Transit Authority for its 2009 ordinance that prohibits M and AO-rated video game ads from all its vehicles and facilities, citing that the ordinance is a clear violation of the entertainment software community's constitutional rights.

What do you do when you get banned from Resistance: Fall of Man and, subsequently, the PlayStation Network? Sue Sony, of course! That's the course of action Erik Estavillo of San Jose is pursuing after he was banned from playing R:FoM and other PSN-enabled games while "exercising his First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Speech in the game's public forum."

It's quite an emotional rollercoaster, this week really was. Straight off from the news that the King of Pop has died, we went on to have the usual string of gaming news that rocked our own worlds. With the usual news on lawsuits, layoffs, company shutdowns, convicted murderers over consoles, it was looking to be a sad state of affairs. Good thing we've got our own Neverland to brighten things up a bit. And now we've come to the Fourth of July weekend. Time to kick off those shoes, stretch out, unwind and celebrate. You know we all deserve it. Happy FOJ weekend, everyone!

Another week full of lawsuits. Poor, beleaguered company Midway came under fire once again, and this time it was from a very unlikely direction: the guy behind the Mortal Kombat movies is suing them in order to "protect his IP rights", which is a better way of saying that he wants to keep milking the MK franchise for as long as possible. Square Enix also got served with a class-action lawsuit for "deceiving" Final Fantasy XI patrons regarding fees. Not everything was bad, though. Read all about 'em after the jump in this week's Warrior recap.

Brett Ratner makes movies. He directed stuff like the Rush Hour series and the third X-Men movie. Recently, he confirmed to UGO.com's Movie Blog that yes indeedy, he's going to be working on the big screen adaptation of the God of War video game series.

A series of lawsuits filed by Activision has led to speculation that the world's biggest video game publisher is now employing tactics similar to those employed by the RIAA to crack down on file sharers. However, Karin Pagnanelli, Activision's lead attorney, has denied that the
lawsuits had anything to do with file sharing. More after the jump.

Another lawsuit has been filed against 3D Realms, this time over the first-person shooter Earth No More (Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC) whose original idea was allegedly stolen from Cinemagraphix Entertainment. 3D Realms' CEO, however, seems confident that the company will be able to prove its full innocence. Check out the full article for more details.

Sony is under fire on the legal front once again, and this time the target is the company's usage of the trademark "Buzz", which it uses for Relentless Software's Buzz! quiz game series. The complainant? A U.S-based electronic trivia games company called Buzztime Entertainment. More in the full article.

Long-standing lawsuit filed by WWE against THQ and Jakks Pacific concerning racketeering and bribery was finally put to rest by a US district court judge last December 3rd. More details about  the allegations made by WWE against THQ and Jakks Pacific and the lawsuit in general at the full article.

Sony, oh Sony, when will you launch a gaming console that won't get slapped with yet another lawsuit? Parallel Processing Corporation (PPC), a California-based company, sued Sony and accused the creators of the PlayStation for infringing on its patent of Synchronized Parallel Processing with Shared Memory (Patent no. 5,056,000), and using the said patent on its Cell processors.

The five-page complaint that PPC filed against Sony claims that Sony's powerful Cell processors used the company's patented technology, enabling Sony's Cell chips to breakdown processes into smaller ones, all running at the same time and in different parallel processors for faster computing.

The patent was signed and approved on October 8, 1991, and was awarded to International Parallel Machines. Parallel Processing Corporation claims to be the exclusive licensee of the patent, and is seeking damages and attorney's fees. But the scarier part? Impounding and destruction of all Sony products that infringe on the same patent.

With past lawsuits ranging from rumble controllers, LAN technology, and even employees demanding for overtime pay, we certainly hope that Sony and the PlayStation 3 come out of this mess unscathed. We still have Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII to look forward to after all.