Time for an update on a lawsuit due to be heard in St. Louis Sept. 5  that could determine the future of increasingly lucrative fantasy leagues. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which licenses fantasy games on behalf of the league and players (part of a five-year deal), contends use of players’ names and stats for a commercial fantasy league requires a license. Fantasy league operator CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. says the stats are in the public domain and the players are public figures. Among the issues:
-- MLBAM says CBC is running a league, not publishing statistics, and is exploting players’ identities. CBC says what it does falls within appropriate boundaries and that MLBAM wants a monopoly.
-- Law professor Eugene Volokh says a decision on behalf of MLB could have a major impact on use of names oin any venture deemed commercial: “"What if you use a historical figure’s name in a historical novel? Or other games, like Trivial Pursuit? How about ‘Jeopardy!’? Would they be liable as well? That seems to be the logical consequence of this. How do you identify what is news, and other times when there’s communication of factual information?”
-- Rod Smolla, dean of Richmond Law School, invokes the G word: “This could become like the Grokster case in the music-downloading world, where the Supreme Court could be asked to draw that line between the benefits of public use and ownership of property.”
Could being the operative word.