Football fixture lists are copyrighted. crazy!

[londrum]

just got an email today saying i had to pay thousands of pounds for a license if i wanted to list all the dates that a football team were playing. I didn't realise it before, but apparently football fixture lists are all copyrighted. you are not allowed to tell people when your team is playing next season unless you cough up lots of money to the football league. that has to be the craziest example of copyright law in existance.

i am not talking about descriptions or images here, i am just taking about a simple list of dates. eg
10/01/2010 -- blah v blob
20/01/2010 -- blah v bleurgh

needless to say, i removed the list.

[Demaestro]

Wow that is pretty insane.

For the 2010 Olympics there was something similar.

The committee was granted a copyright on "Vancouver 2010"

They went full court press on this too. A few websites got hit just for having Vancouver 2010 on them.

Many people had to resort to using terms like "Vancouver winter games" to avoid paying large license fees.

I am not recommending pushing the envelope, these guys have money to go after even frivolous charges but I wonder what would happen if you gave date ranges.

Blah vs Blah between the 6th and the 8th of July starting sometime before 8:01am and after 7:59am

[Dijkgraaf]

It would probably depend on where you are, but in some countries (e.g. USA [csga.com] or UK [the1709blog.blogspot.com]) the courts have determined that lists are excluded from copyright.
Only the layout and additional information would attract copyright.

Disclaimer: I'm not qualified to give legal advice and you should seek legal advice from a qualified professional.

[edited by: tedster at 2:53 am (utc) on Jul 8, 2010]
[edit reason] fix broken links [/edit]

[londrum]

im in the UK. apparently the fixtures are protected because they "put work into creating the database".

its not the words, or the layout, that is protected, its the actual data -- the dates of who's playing who.

[Frank_Rizzo]

The position has changed over the years. Information on the latest judgement is here:

[out-law.com...]

Mr Justice Floyd:

"The separate work which goes into obtaining, verifying or presenting the data in the Fixture Lists is trivial. The Fixture Lists are not protected by the sui generis [database] right"

What is needed is for sites to take a stand on this and not be bullied.

[londrum]

i'm just going to take up cricket instead. its cheaper.