MLB Online Hit With Patent Suit
from the live-by-the-sword dept
Not sure what the deal is today with companies who have been using bizarre interpretations of intellectual property to their advantage suddenly getting hit with intellectual property lawsuits. First, we had the RIAA get sued for patent infringement and now MLB Online is getting sued for patent infringement over some patents concerning the real-time display of game information online. Not surprisingly, it’s a small patent hoarding company rather than a company that is actually doing any innovating. Of course, MLB.com doesn’t exactly have a sparkling record when it comes to intellectual property freedom. You may recall that they wanted to stop all other sites from reporting in-game data (facts) because they seemed to believe they owned all the rights to in-game data. Of course, you can’t copyright facts. Once again, though, this lawsuit is unlikely to make MLB.com realize some of the problems with the way intellectual property is dealt with these days.
