Player Stats are Public Domain, Says Court

Major League Baseball strikes out in a case that looked at whether independent fantasy sports sites could freely use statistics and other player data.

Fantasy sports are now a multibillion-dollar industry, thanks in no small part to the Internet. Naturally, the sports leagues want a big slice of the pie. After all, it's their games and their players, right? That view led to a rather nasty dispute between Major League Baseball and CBC Distribution and Marketing, the owners of fantasy sports site CDMsports.com. MLB sued CDMsports.com over the site's use of game results, stats, and player names, arguing that it alone had the right to use players' names and likenesses, and that the stats were an extension of that right.