Fantasy baseball leagues can keep using the names and statistics of major league players without licensing agreements.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to get involved in an ongoing dispute between a fantasy sports business and professional baseball. Without comment, the justices declined to hear the case involving the $1.5 billion industry in the United States.
Fantasy sports players draft teams of real-life players and compete against other "owners" using those players' statistics.
The 2005 lawsuit involved C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing, a Missouri company unable to obtain a license from a subsidiary of Major League Baseball. The company, which had a quarter-million customers at the time, was banned from using players' names in its fantasy games.
C.B.C. sued, claiming players' names and baseball statistics are readily available in newspapers and online, and therefore are not the intellectual property of Major League Baseball.
A federal court and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in favor of the fantasy baseball business, saying that enforcing state law rights would violate C.B.C.'s right of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
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