The ruling effectively means that this data is now considered in the public domain and is no longer protected by intellectual property rights.
The appeals court said that the information used in CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc’s fantasy baseball games is "all readily available in the public domain, and it would be strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone.”
MLB had traditionally licensed these rights to CBC. It was the League’s refusal to continue to offer the licence that led to the issuing of the legal challenge by CBC.
The fantasy gaming industry is worth an estimated $1.5 billion each year. The team owners and player’s union had sought to protect their names so that only the MLB subsidiary company Major League Baseball Advanced Media would be free to use them in its fantasy league.
