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590TU Discussion

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Rights for NBA scores on pagers - what if?

I'm an engineer, not a policy wonk, so bear with me. In class we learned about the Hearst VS AP case that said that you couldn't protect facts unless someone taking those facts would "destroy" the underlying service. In the case about the NBA trying to block the scores of games being broadcast on pagers without them taking a cut of the $$, the quite reasonable claim is that those scores being broadcast would not destroy the NBA and hence it's OK.

OK - suppose that I founded SpaithCO Limited and in 2003 I gave the NBA a wad of cash to have exclusive rights to sell those scores on pagers. (Pretend the real life court case never happened.) Then some heavy weight (say Moto) in 2004 comes along and doesn't want to play ball with SpaithCO. If Motorola can broadcast out NBA scores without paying SpaithCO, then SpaithCO's wise and handsome CEO could argue that his company would be destroyed by Moto's action. Never mind what happens to the NBA.

Does SpaithCO have a claim here? I've been speculating and I believe it depends on whether the NBA had a right to *exclusively* sell this information to SpaithCO for this use in the first place. I'm thinking the answer is no or the NBA would've pulled something like this already to get at least a little $$ out of some SpaithCO. Can anyone out there shed some more light on this? The idea of some underlying service being "destroyed" really seems like a grey area in many cases.

[Author: John Spaith]

--Jackr 22:32, 6 Oct 2004 (PDT) To me this sounds like the Cable Company phone directory case also mentioned in class, just with the addition of money being paid to get the initial information. It would seem the NBA managed to sell something it never really owned. Of course, I'm just an engineer as well.