[URL]http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3580881[/URL]

this has the potential to be very interesting in regards to intellectual property ownership versus news reporting and fair use

whatcha think? any predictions?

Re: rubyraks/toasty

my gut instinct is that this will get laughed out of court, if they surpass the jurisdictional stuff.

would this not be different than citing stats on congressional expenditures and getting sued by a hypothetical congress union for unauthorized use?

man, without a check on lexis or westlaw, i smell a Rule 11.

Re: rubyraks/toasty

wastn referring to the juris prudence. referring to the battle between ownership vs news.

Re: rubyraks/toasty

Hard to say without knowing a bit more about it. On the one hand, stats are stats and info is info -- I can't get sued by weather.com by looking at a thermometer on my back porch and announcing the temperature just because they happen to be reporting the same thing.

On the other hand, the [B]gathering and maintaining[/B] of statistics is a somewhat different thing. If CBS watches the games and records their own stats, that's one thing, but utilizing real-time stats gathered and provided by the NFL for the benefit of CBS's fantasy football users, that's a different matter entirely. There's no rule that the NFL has to release any stats to the public at large, let alone real-time stats, and there is an argument that they would be within their rights to keep those close to the vest as a way of bolstering support for its own fantasy football service.

Stats are stats, but The Official NFL Stats have heightened significance in the fantasy football world and nowadays, if you don't have real time stats, your service is kinda worthless. That's how I'd argue it if I were the NFL, anyway...

Re: rubyraks/toasty

But I see this as on one hand releasing the stats publically and then trying to charge the public for the use of those statistics.

And that's how I'd argue it if I were CBS. ;)