EU court rejects fixtures copyright claim

, 2 March, 7comments  |  Jump to most recent
The Premier League's copyright claim on match fixture lists has been rejected by European Union judges.

For the past few years, anyone wishing to list fixtures for the FA Premier and Scottish Premier Leagues — including, of course, unofficial sites like ToffeeWeb — has been required to purchase a license from Football Dataco.

Yahoo, bookmaker Stan James, and sports information firm Enetpulse were accused by the football leagues of breaching EU copyright laws by reproducing fixture lists without a license. European judges ruled this week, however, that compiling match fixture lists needed "significant" work, but did not entail the creativity required for copyright protection.

Despite the ruling, the Premier League remain confident that their copyright claim will be upheld in the UK where the matter will now return for a final ruling.

Mark Daniels, an expert in copyright, patents, and trademarks at law firm Browne Jacobson believes they will be out of luck, however.

"The ECJ has left pretty much no scope for the English court to do anything except say, 'There is no copyright in the fixture list'," he said.

In that case, in future, anyone would be able to use the football fixtures lists, as long as they did not try to imply that they were representing the football leagues.

Quotes or other material sourced from BBC Sport



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