The judge ruled against Morris Communications, which owns The Florida Times-Union and The Augusta Chronicle, in the case for which the PGA Tour argued that it had invested $26million on a computerized scoring system, and that there was a difference between reporting news and selling the tour's proprietary information to third parties.
Morris has stated that it will appeal against the court ruling.
Morris sent two employees to each PGA Tour event in 2000, the year the antitrust lawsuit was filed. They worked in the media center and, using the PGA Tour scoring system, posted their own real-time scores for CNNSI.com and Morris news outlets.
Commented Julian Miller, president of The Augusta Chronicle: "The judge ruled that golf scores are not in the public domain when they are presented in the media center, which is an interesting decision.
"The decision has broad implications to journalists, the reporting of news in general and to the public. We feel a responsibility to carry those issues forward on appeal."
In response PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem stated: "The court has agreed...that the law protects the ability of the Tour and other similar organizations to benefit from investment in proprietary scoring and other statistical data-gathering technologies."
