David Savage reports in the L.A. Times that the Supreme Court is considering whether to take an appeal from Major League Baseball concerning licensing rights relating to fantasy baseball. MLB has claimed that it owns the copyrights and thus is exclusively entitled to license baseball names and performance statistics.
The legal dispute arose four years ago when Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which represents the players and owners, signed licensing deals for fantasy games with a few big companies, including Yahoo, ESPN, Fox Sports and CBS Sportsline. At the same time, Major League Baseball ended earlier deals with dozens of leagues, games and websites that had offered fantasy games.
One of the jilted providers, C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing in St. Louis, went to court and last year won a double-header victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals there. The judges ruled that the fantasy game provider had a 1st Amendment right to use the names and statistics of major league players, and it was free to ignore the earlier licensing deal.
