Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Yahoo sues to get free fantasy football info

Last update: June 3, 2009 - 2:26 PM

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ironic
This is funny because Yahoo charges you for access to same day, live stats in all their fantasy leagues. The application is called Stat … read more Tracker. What a joke.
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Internet giant Yahoo Inc. has filed suit in Minnesota, demanding free access to the player information that drives its popular fantasy football game.
Yahoo alleges that the NFL Players Association and corporation has no right to charge for the use of players pictures, biographies and on-field statistics, according to its suit filed this week in federal court. In the past, the NFL Players Association has asserted that those things fall under intellectual property rights.

Yahoo's fantasy football site relies upon such real-time statistics. Participants use them to decide which players to draft and trade throughout the football season.

The issue of whether companies can use league information for fantasy sports sites has come up before. Then, the sport was baseball.

In 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit decided that CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. could use Major League Baseball players' names and statistics for its fantasy baseball products -- without paying a licensing fee.

JENNA ROSS


http://www.startribune.com/local/46823867.html?elr=KArksUUUU

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