Sport Statistics on the Net

By Marie D’Amico, 

If you crave real-time information about sporting events, you're not alone. That's probably why the ESPN " SportsZone " site on the World Wide Web attracts an estimated 400,000 people a day.

Good news, sport fans. On January 30th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a recent district court decision which would have halted the real-time electronic reporting of sports statistics in its infancy.

In March 1996, the National Basketball Association and NBA Properties, the company that owns exclusive worldwide rights to market and promote NBA games, sued Motorola's SportsTrax , a sports paging service that transmits sports statistics to its subscribers in real-time, and Stats, Inc., the company that supplies real-time scores to Motorola and companies like America Online (AOL) (keyword: Stats).

In July, the district court ruled in favor of the NBA , saying real-time sports statistics are the NBA 's most valued assets, which the NBA protects by licensing rights to real-time sport statistics to specific licensees. The district court said the SportsTrax service constituted "commercial misappropriation" under New York law because it took "the essence of NBA 's most valuable property -- the excitement and entertainment of a game in progress."

Stats reporters had watched or listened to ongoing NBA -licensed television or radio broadcasts and then, without permission or license from the NBA , reported those sports statistics in real-time to SportsTrax and AOL. The NBA 's main objection, according to NBA attorney Roger Zissu, is that Motorola transmitted a whole host of sports statistics electronically sometimes within seconds after the action took place in NBA games.

After first issuing a permanent injunction to prevent Motorola from marketing and selling SportsTrax and to prevent Stats from transmitting sports scores to AOL, Motorola and Stats appealed the case. The district court decided to allow Motorola and Stats to continue their sports gathering and transmitting activities until the Court of Appeals could make a decision.

The Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s claim of misappropriation. The Court of Appeals ruled that neither SportsTrax nor Stats’ AOL site competed with NBA games, whether live or broadcast. In addition, the Court ruled that neither Motorola nor Stats were misappropriating the NBA ’s property, because both Motorola and Stats expended their own resources in gathering, assembling, and transmitting real-time sports statistics.

The NBA can appeal this decision. So, if you're thinking of supplying sports statistics electronically, and you want to play it super safe, you can follow the NBA Media Guidelines. You can transmit electronic sports scores and other NBA game-related information under the Guidelines as follows:

• Transmit statistics no more than three times per quarter and once during each of the two quarter breaks;

• Transmit two times during each overtime period (once during the break immediately before it starts and once during); and

• Tranmissions may not exceed 30 seconds.

Questions? Send me email .

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