Fantasy Baseball and the Non-Copyrightability of Facts

Continuing the tradition of stupid baseball-related lawsuits (the best to date being the imbroglio over the Los Angeles Angels of Aneheim), MLB teams and the players union sued a fantasy league operator for running the league without the express written consent of Major League Baseball. A judge has tossed the lawsuit, holding that player statistics are historical facts and therefore not copyrightable.

The players are expected to appeal, and the suit may go forward on right of publicity/misappropriation grounds. These are basically state law claims that people turn to when they can't get what they want out of copyright law (Supremacy Clause be damned). There was at least one case in California where a right of publicity claim succeeded where a copyright license failed -- a celebrity successfully sued for misappropriation where an advertiser (or maybe a pinball machine designer, I may be getting my cases confused) had licensed a copyrighted image from the movie studio. Kozinski didn't like that one bit.