This isn’t a criminal matter, so it isn’t a case of someone “breaking the law.” Much of American civil law is developed when somebody does something to someone else that falls into a grey area. It is going to take a jury to decide if the Romantics are right and the song as it is performed in the game is not only close to the original, but that it will confuse people as to who is playing to the commercial detriment of the Romantics because it wrongly appropriated their “sound.” In this case, “wrongly appropriated” means just that Activision didn’t pay for it.

In this case, it is pretty clear that Activision got the rights to use the song from the music publisher, EMI Music. EMI Music didn’t have to get the permission of the songwriters to grant the license to Activision because the usual songwriting contract gives complete power to license to the publisher.

Ironically, the guys who wrote “What I Like About You” and who got the songwriters’ share of that license money are the Romantics themselves.