The Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court ruling that fantasy sports Web sites operators had the right to use major league baseball players names and statistics without Major League Baseball or the Players permission and without compensation.
The lower Court said the sites right to free speech over weighted the players and Major Leagues Baseball rights to the players names and the fees that licensing such fees could generate.
The ruling stated that the names of famous athletes are in the public domain, and are therefore available for use.
Major League Baseball’s argued that fantasy sports leagues be required to pay a license for the right to use player names and plug runs, hits and errors into their popular online games, arguing that billions of dollars in licensing fees would be jeopardized if the lowers court ruling was not overturned.
However they did not do enough to convince the Supreme Court of that.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case also throws into question any licensing deals already in place, something MLB had said amounted to “billions of dollars.”
When MLB appealed to the high court in February, it argued that such deals could be jeopardized if companies had a free-speech right to use the names of famous people without permission.
The St. Louis-based fantasy league operator that brought the lawsuit successfully countered that ballplayers are well-known to the public so that their names and statistics can be used freely, without paying for the privilege.
Last June, an appellate court said statistics used in fantasy baseball games are “all readily available in the public domain, and it would be strange law that a person would not have a 1st Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone.” The company argued it did not need the permission of baseball to use the player’s names and statistics, and it won free-speech victories from a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis.
The justices made no comment in turning down the case.
The question I have is if a fantasy’s sports site are allowed to use the names of famous players, what stops domainers from registering a “fan sites” of say DerekJeter.com, AlexRodriguez.com or PaytonManning.com and placing adsence ads on the site?
If commercial use of famous players names are allowed by fantasy sports sites why can they not be used by other sites for commercial purposes? And if famous players names are allowed to be used in such a manner why not any famous person, any celebrity, politician, actor, musician?
Many past decisions have awarded domains of famous people to the celebrity and against the registrant.
Madonna.com and Sting.com are 2 domains that come to mind that were taken from the registrant and given to the celebrity but there any many over the years.
How does the decision in this case reconcile with such previous cases?
Is this ruling a green light to domainers to register domains containing famous athletes names?
Does this ruling give a green light to domainers to register domains containing celebrities in general allow the domain to be used for commercial use?
I would think so.
Finally does this ruling void the New York law passed last year making such registrations illegal?
A VERY interesting case, which may have broad implications in the domainer community, certainly needs further attention from some of our industries best legal minds.
Great post – there are 2 sides on a coin
I say it says no such thing at all.
This is about whether or not the league owns the rights to people doing things / making money through the creative use of players and their stats. It didn’t say “people aren’t entitled to their own trademarks / identity”.
Gordon
It said that commercial businesses can use players names, stats and fame for commercial purposes without compensation to the players or the league.
Why can’t we?
Very, very interesting.
I would tend to think (IANAL) that celebs have a better case for DerekJeter.com than Madonna.com or Sting.com because those names don’t have exclusive uses.
Madonna.com can be a religious site and Sting.com could be just about anything. I’m not familiar with these cases…am I correct in assuming these two were either not developed or parked in an infringing way?
IMHO, DerekJeter.com and PeytonManning.com aren’t as good examples as AlexRodriguez.com b/c they aren’t common names.
If some guy named Alex Rodriguez owned the name it *should* be safe unless it was being used to make money off the ballplayer’s identity.
Germ
The domain madonna.com was directed to a porn site when it was taken.
The court’s ruling here said fantasy leagues could make money off players names