Of the many titles Kevin Butler has donned during his tenure at Sony, VP of Lawsuit Defendant would probably be the last thing on his mind. The lawsuit was sparked after Jerry Lambert, who plays Kevin Butler in Sony’s Playstation 3 ads, appeared in a Bridgestone commercial as one of the scientists testing out tires. The ad was part of Bridgestone’s GameOn campaign where a tire purchase could net you a free Nintendo Wii. In the commercial itself, the scientists, including Lambert, are seen playing Mario Kart Wii. Sony wasn’t too fond of the man playing and advertising a competitor’s game and console, and on September 11th they filed a lawsuit against him citing IP violation. Bridgestone proceeded to remove Lambert’s image from all of their ads for the remainder of their campaign. This begs the question though: are they suing him for portraying a very similar character, or are they suing him for that plus associating himself with a competitor. I have a feeling that they would’ve let him be if he was doing something else as the character. But since he was playing a Wii, that probably wasn’t flying with Sony.

Either way, it looks like both parties might be coming to an out-of-court settlement. In a filing, the lawyer representing Sony called the courtroom deputy and said that they were coming to an agreement. The court then ordered Sony, “by October 12, 2012, to either: (1) withdraw the ex parte motion; or (2) file a status update describing the current status of the dispute and whether a ruling on the motion will be necessary.” So currently the case is still ongoing, but it looks like it’ll all come to an end soon. I guess we can rule out Kevin Butler being in Playstation All-Stars then huh?

SCEA sues Bridgestone and Jerry Lambert (Kevin Butler actor) over Game On promotion [NeoGAF, via VentureBeat]