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Question on Posting Match Analysis

Posted By: Steve Mellen
Date: Tuesday, 16 February 2010, at 3:21 p.m.

In Response To: Question on Posting Match Analysis (Stick)

The question is whether baseball players have such rights in the first place. If they sign them away, it's irrelevant because I'm pretty sure they sign them away in favor of the team or the league, not in favor of the people who publish boxscores in the newspaper.

The most pertinent decision is the case of NBA v. Motorola from the 90s, where a federal court decided that the NBA (and, by extension, the players) doesn't have an intellectual property right in the play-by-play of a basketball game. The court specifically rejected the argument that a basketball game is akin to a literary work or an opera.

I realize people "feel" like they own lots of things, but I wouldn't expect a US court to uphold the concept of copyrighted backgammon scores any time soon, or ever. Different jurisdictions have different concepts of what constitutes an intellectual property right, but honestly you'll have to sell me on the idea that facts can be copyrighted. If I want to watch a game and write down what happens, what legal concept says I can't?

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