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Oct 17 2007 9:11AM EDT

Court Rules Baseball Stats Can Be Used For Fantasy Games

An intriguing case has reached a pinnacle in St. Louis, a case that made one wonder why Major League Baseball even went to court in the first place. Dollars, that's why.

The use of professional athletes' statistics and names is protected by the First Amendment and are allowed to be used by companies that conduct fantasy sports leagues, a federal court ruled, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

CDM Fantasy Sports, a St. Louis-based company, doesn't need a license from professional sports organizations to run online games, according to a decision from the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed a lower court's decision. The three-judge panel rejected an argument from the Major League Baseball Players Association, the newspaper said. The MLBPA argued that using players names and statistics infringed on the athletes "right to publicity."

The court ruled that the First Amendment topped rights of publicity. "It would be a strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone,'' the decision read.

"It means that the fantasy-sports industry can continue to grow, continue to improve and innovate," said Charlie Weigert, a vice president at CDM who began the legal tussle in 2005 by operating a baseball league without a license from MLB Advanced Media. "It means the leagues cannot stymie the industry, cannot control it like they wanted to control it."

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that about 19.5 million people in the United States and Canada participate in fantasy sports, though the majority play fantasy football.

This case made Major League Baseball look small, as if the league actually owned these statistics. Baseball should spend more time and research figuring out how postseason games can end before midnight Eastern time.


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