Legal Tidbits - Fantasy Baseball and MLB's Rights to Stats

In what is shaping up to be an interesting dispute, especially for someone interested in IP law and fantasy baseball, MLB is decreasing its licenses for its officially licensed fantasy games and assuming tighter control over the use of MLB trademarks and (here's where it gets interesting) players statistics by fantasy sports outlets. Seems that now that fantasy-geekdom has gone mainstream and become a powerful economic force in pro sports, MLB is trying to throw its IP weight around.

This has succeeded in pissing off fantasy owners.

In addition, CDM Fantasy Sports, parent company of TQSTATS, which runs the fantasy baseball league in which I have participated (and in which I am currently the reigning champion - go Zen Mayhem!!), has filed a federal suit against MLB asserting that MLB cannot control player statistics and that those materials are in the public domain.

(Here's another link to a pretty good article on the topic, which explains that the core issue is not the right to use the stats, but the right to use the players' names, i.e., a "rights of publicity issue")

Should be very interesting to see how this shakes out.

Legal Tidbits - Cash Money from Nestle

This is just a great story. Some guy is standing in line in Home Depot a few years back when a woman walks up to him and tells him that "you look just like the guy on my coffee jar." As it turns on, in 1986 this guy had posed for a photographer on assignment for Nestle. Unbenowest to him, he has been the face of Nescafe Coffee for the past six years.

He was awarded....get this...$15.6 million by a California jury for using his likeness without his permission and profiting from it.

Wow. I wish someone would use my likeness without my permission and profit from it....

Legal Tidbits - More on the DMCA

Don't look now, but even Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks is going of on the importance of Courts and Legislators getting the Digital Millenium Copyright Act right and not overly restricting consumer rights and competition. (To be fair, Mark was a pretty savvy techie guy prior to becoming a member of the NBA glitterati).

His article previews the upcoming MGM vs. Grokster Supreme Court appeal, which is to be heard next month.

Now, if only Mark would focus on getting more playing time for Josh Howard and Marquis Daniels, so they could contribute a bit more to my Basketball Fantasy Team, Zen Mayhem. C'mon Mark, stop screwing around with journalism and pay attention to basketball!

Food - Delicious Eel Bowl

I live in Northern New Jersey and work in mid-town Manhattan.

Like most, I'm a big fan of good food. And I'll admit it, I enjoy watching the Food Network (old-school favorites like Alton Brown, The Naked Chef, and of course Iron Chef (!)). So, from time to time, we'll talk food.

The fabulous Japanese Restaurant Chikuba (44th Street betwen Madison and Fifth Avenues) has one of the best lunch items I've ever had: the Eel Bowl - a piping hot ceramic bowl of crunchy rice and cooked and sauced Unagi (Eel), which gets mashed into the rice when served. WOW. This place is also pretty famous for their Pork Ramen, which is served on Friday's only, I believe. Haven't tried that yet.

Legal Tidbits -- Using Copyright Law to Monopolize Aftermarkets

One issue that I find interesting is the use of copyright law as an anticompetive tool to monopolize aftermarkets.

As reported today on internetnews.com, a recent suit brought against Apple claims that ties between Apple's iTunes music download service and its iPod violate the antitrust laws.

Now I love my new iPod, and iTunes is pretty nifty in its own right, but I'm not a big fan of what Apple is doing here, which is essentially creating an incompatibility between the industry standard music format (AAC) and iTunes, such that users can't play iTunes downloaded music on non-iPod digital music players and iPod users must purchase their downloads from iTunes.

To me, the interesting legal issue arises when individuals try to circumvent technological roadblocks like this. In recent cases, companies have tried to use copyright litigation and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provision as tools to discourage reverse engineering of technology like this to "fix" these intentionally created interoperability problems. The Federal Circuit and the Sixth Circuit have come down on the right side of this issue in recent decisions in Chamberlain v. Skylink and Lexmark v. Static Control Components, interpreting the DMCA in a manner that will prevent its use to restrict legitimate competition in "aftermarket" components.

Humble Beginnings

Hello all. And welcome to my blog. My name is Mike. I'm a 30 year-old Intellectual Property Lawyer, Husband, and Father-of-Two. I'm also an avid sports fan, music lover, and movie, technology & gadget buff.

I envision this blog as a space to post about IP law, my family, my interests, interesting technology, entertainment, movies, music and sports news items, food, wine, and whatever other things I feel like rambling on about.

So much for the introduction.

So why would you read it? No idea.
But you're here now, aren't you? So away we go...