07/18/2008, 12:45am, EDT
Friday, July 18th
MLB orders action against Baseball iPhone app
Knopper says he will obey the order, but is saddened that his "labor of love" must undergo such changes, especially since it brought him no income, and was constructed out of sheer amusement. He admits he does not know what to use to replace the logos, but will either blur them out, or replace them with alternative images.
The move is just the latest in a long line of Major League Baseball threats, with the conglomerate blocking sales of Orioles-spoofing Obama shirts, and suing online fantasy baseball businesses in 2005. CBC Distribution and Marketing of CDM Fantasy Sports won a 2006 case against MLB, after the latter had deemed player names and statistics to be copyrighted material. MLB's appeal of the decision was thrown out of court, with the US Supreme court denying its petition.
Filed under: software, iPhone apps
Other story tags: MLB, Baseball
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Boycott MLB
Hit them where it hurts and stop watching games.
Re: Boycott
Right, they're protecting their copyrights and trademarks, so it is reason to boycott them. I'm sure if someone was using Apple logos throughout their product, you'd be complaining about Apple suing them.
SportsLogos.net
Why don't they cease and desist this guy
http://www.sportslogos.net
One thing vs another
These logos are freely printed everywhere. If MLB does not want us to see their logos, I say fine. Lets not watch.
This guy is not making money off their stuff, he is support MLB. But greed is becoming universal.
Maybe he needs to take a picture of the logo in a public place, then it becomes his picture of the logo and MLB can bite DICK.
Just a thought.
wrong way to do things
he was not making any more and it was more of a hobby for his love of baseball.. looks kinda bad on teh MLB. though i believe in protecting your trademarks etc, he wasn't doing anything to harm them. in fact, i would have hired him to work on the MLB apps. i am sure he would have loved that, and problem would be solved.
Dumb
This has to be one of the stupidest things a sports organization can do. Give me a break, it's free advertising in an industry without competition. What is somebody going to do, start up a new national baseball league and steal their logo because they weren't defending it! Give me a break.
Go ahead MLB, tick your fans off and stop free advertisement. Your biggest enemy is yourself. If the NFL did this, I'd stop watching football. Fortunately for me, I could care less about baseball.
MLB greeds
I seriously think the MLB white collars need to get laid.
Well, I'd agree
with you Testudo, if the software was commercial, but this is free software. MLB cannot have my sympathy at all.
I personally would replace as many logos as possible with parodies, such as the ducking fodgers, the wankees,..
ugly interface
His interface is quite drab anyway - the logos won;t be missed too much.
If I were MLB, I would've complained too... it's one thing for someone to borrow your logo, it's another thing to borrow it badly.
Re: Well, I'd agree
The software might be free, but the product to use it on isn't. One could argue that their case lies in the fact Apple makes money on the iPod/iPhone in part because of this app.
It's pretty thin, but some lawyer worth their pay could push it.