March 09, 2005

Sports and IP Law: PHOSITA, a law blog that focuses on intellectual property law from members of Dunlap, Codding & Rogers, highlight a couple of interesting articles on recent developments in this area. From Law.com, Pro Sports: Technology Changes Rules of the Game, and (PDF warning) Cardozo Law Review, Who Owns the Back of a Baseball Card?.

posted by billsaysthis to culture at 01:25 PM - 3 comments

I don't believe for one minute that courts will agree with MLB that baseball statistics are copyrighted material.

posted by bperk at 04:21 PM on March 09, 2005

No way. Anyone can dig deep enough and figure the stats for themselves, so there is no legal way to prove that the stats came from a card.

posted by DaGeneral at 06:38 PM on March 09, 2005

Sure there is. Just put a couple unlikely errors in each series of cards (ERA with an extra 0, or with a . in the wrong column), and if they are OCRd from the cards, those errors will show up in the new dataset- extremely unlikely that proofreading will catch those. Just a handful will be enough to prove to a judge that they were OCRd from that dataset. Note that the EU has already explicitly made such things illegal, and is pushing the US to do the same: http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/index.php?p=2869

posted by tieguy at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2005

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