Posted on 05/29/2008 6:06:07 PM PDT by seacapn
A fantasy sports league is facing a very real lawsuit from Major League Baseball, and the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding right now whether it wants to play ball.
At issue is a big case roiling the sports world: Can MLB and its players charge fantasy leagues for the right to use their names and statistics?
Fantasy leagues are operated by players who manage imaginary teams based on the stats of real-life athletes. Depending on how their players perform, their fantasy teams thrive or dive in carefully monitored standings.
A St. Louis-based company called CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. says that companies shouldn’t have to pay licensing fees to use those figures — and they’ve already won their case in two lower courts, so MLB has filed an appeal to the nation's highest court.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Agreed. Statistics should be a no-brainer—it cannot be covered by copyright law, since there is no original content. Sports team names should be covered by trade mark law. Individual names could be trade marked, but there must be a conscious effort to do this.
Are their names and statistics public domain.....?
If so, tell the MLB to kiss off. If not, I want to only see numbers on uniforms, and the announcers can just sit silent as some number walks to the plate.
I think we should pay baseball players royalties for using their stats when Nintendo pays us royalties for using our images in the stands on their video games. To put it another way, it will be interesting to see what happens when baseball alienates its fans just like the music industry is trying to do.
Better for the Supremes to waste their time on this than on important issues.
I suppose their intention is to drive all of this business to outfits like Yahoo with whom they have negotiated royalty agreements, but the reality is that the customers would have already moved to Yahoo if they liked what the bigs have to offer.
The nimrod greedy sports leagues are more likely to kiss these customers, spectators and viewers away than they are to drive them to the fantasy league of their choice.
Yeah this is a great idea. Make it so I can’t even say a player’s name or talk about their stats with my friends without having the write MLB for permission and tagging every trademarked word with “TM”.
I didn’t give a shit about baseball before. I give even less now.
“I think we should pay baseball players royalties for using their stats when Nintendo pays us royalties for using our images in the stands on their video games. To put it another way, it will be interesting to see what happens when baseball alienates its fans just like the music industry is trying to do.”
I could see paying them for their names or their faces, but not their stats. Stats are public information. Anyone who hears, sees, or reads about the game knows about the stats. Nobody “owns” the stats.
Baseball has already alienated many fans with its strikes. It would be good PR to drop this suit.
Greedy major league baseball, who wants taxpayers to build stadiums for billionnaire owners and millionnaire players, also doens’t want little leaguers to use MLB team names unless they pay for use of the team name. It is exactly this type of thing that has made me a major booster of collegiate sports.
I’m confused on the merits of the case. Do fantasy leagues make/take money? Is MLB somehow damaged by fans pretending? It seems like MLB would be excited by fnas being into this, because it gets people interested in watching and following teams.
Attacking ones fan base in order to make more money seems particularly short sighted to me.
There is a more fundamental issue here, one of abject stupidity on the part of MLB. Take a look at a major league game’s stands during the regular season. They are half empty — at best. They still get OK TV ratings, though. That’s because a lot of fans LOVE the stats side of this, and a lot of them play fantasy ball. So, the MLB decides to declare war against the people who are largely responsible for keeping their game afloat. Brilliant. Just BRILLIANT.
Idiots (for those of you who could not tell that was sarc).
“I didn’t give a shit about baseball before. I give even less now.”
I was actually starting to get back into baseball again. It’s been a long time coming since the last strike.
F### ‘em now. Won’t bother. Indians who? (They SUCK anyway, so who cares x 10.)
Agreed, the team names are probably trademarked. There might be an invasion of privacy issue as to using player names or images for commercial gain. The stats should be fair game.
Using player's names and stats without MLB approval can be viewed as royalty infringement. The US laws are just stupid enough that they will be.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.