Sports Event Streaming Questioned

Story first appeared in Bloomberg News.

Gannett Co., owner of television stations and 82 newspapers, lost its copyright claims over streaming-video presentation of Wisconsin high school sports programs. A Nashville Intellectual Property Lawyer commented that he had not experienced a case quite like this one.
The McLean, Virginia-based newspaper chain, was appealing a ruling from a trial court in Wisconsin that found the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association’s exclusive license agreements with a video production company didn’t violate Gannett’s First Amendment rights.
The dispute arose when some Gannett newspapers decided to stream four tournament games sponsored by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. The association then asked the federal court to declare it had the right to grant exclusive licenses. Gannet had argued unsuccessfully that WIAA can’t enter into exclusive contract with a private company to broadcast entire events online, or, to raise revenue.
The appeals court said in its August 24 opinion that the implications of Gannett’s arguments were staggering, and that if the media company was correct, then no state actor may ever earn revenue from something that the press might want to broadcast in its entirety.
If Gannett’s arguments were carried to their logical extreme, the appeals court said the patent licensing agreements executed by the University of Wisconsin through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation -- and the $1.07 billion such licenses have brought the university since 21928 could be at risk. A Mexico Intellectual Property Lawyer agrees there is risk.
Gannett’s claim here would cast a shadow over the commercial licensees that WARF sells but implying that the First Amendment required it to dedicate its inventions to the public, the court said in its opinion. Likewise, the ability of high school students to record CDs and sell them to finance a school music program would also be at risk. These examples could be multiplied almost endlessly, the court said.
The court said that reporting on the event and streaming it aren’t the same thing. Everyone understands there is a difference between a description of an event like the Super Bowl, Women’s World Cup or the College World Series and the right both to videotape that entertainment and then to publish it as one sees fit, according tohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif the appeals court’s opinion.
As far as Gannett’s copyright claim is concerned, the appeals court said that the WIAA itself is functioning as the creator and disseminator of content, not the newspapers.
The court the lower court’s holding that the WIAA has the right to grant exclusive licenses. This was also the opinion of a Shanghai Intellectual Property Lawyer.
The lower court case is Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association v. Wisconsin Newspaper Association Inc., 3:09-cv-00155-WMC, U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin (Madison). The appeal is Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association v. Gannett, 10-2627, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.