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Michelle Obama's IP case

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Note CHICAGO PROFESSIONAL SPORTS LIMITED PARTNERSHIP and WGN CONTINENTAL BROADCASTING COMPANY, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION, Defendant-Appellant, 961 F.2d 667 (CA7 1992), opinion by Judge Easterbrook.

A line from the case:

But it is a bane to the other clubs, which would prefer to have fans watch their
contests rather than tune in the Bulls, who, thanks to Michael Jordan and
Scottie Pippen (to name only the Olympians), are the winningest and most popular
team in the NBA.

Of property:

Property is a mixture of rights to use and to exclude others from using. Any transfer of broadcast rights entails exclusion of the competing uses of the same rights. Suppose the NBA sells to NBC the right to
show all or any selection of its games, or carves the broadcast rights into
thirds and parcels the rights among networks. See United States Football League
v. National Football League, 842 F.2d 1335, 1353-55 (2d Cir. 1988). Each
grant to a network will be exclusive; what the network owns, a team cannot show
separately (without the network's permission). Otherwise the league has little
it can sell collectively. The Bulls acknowledge this by conceding that they may
not sell to WGN a right to broadcast games that NBC has selected.

Full post as published by IPBiz on September 08, 2008 (boomark / email).