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Tech And COVID-19: MLB Rolls Out Remote Cheering Function In Its MLB App

from the 3-cheers dept

As we continue navigating this new world full of COVID-19, mostly alone due to the laughably inept response from our national leadership, there’s a certain humor to the ongoing push for a “return to normalcy.” What makes it so funny is how completely clear it is that “normalcy” is going to be anything but normal. Go back to work, but wear a mask and stay the fuck away from your coworkers. Get your kids back to school, but maybe not, also masks, and remote learning, and they have to eat their lunch in their classrooms. Restaurants are open, but only outside, with less people, and there will be temperature checks.

And then there are the sports. Collegiate sports are shutting down with the quickness, but the professional sports leagues are opening. The NBA is back, but only in Orlando, which is basically coronavirus ground zero. The NHL is coming back, except a ton of players are testing positive.

And then there’s baseball. Yes, Major League Baseball is back, but masks make an appearance and, most importantly, there are no crowds. If you aren’t a baseball fan, I’ll forgive you for not understanding this, but crowds are a huge deal for baseball. Part of the ambiance of the game, be it in person or on television, is that low level din of crowd noise, vendors yelling out, and the like. Not to mention the roar or boos of crowds during peak excitement. With no crowds, the soundtrack of the summer is just the lead singer with no instruments backing him or her up.

MLB’s solution to this was to pipe in crowd music. With audio files at least in part from Sony’s MLB The Show video game series, teams were encouraged to add their own flavors to the audio files and then pipe them into stadiums. This helped, of course, but how was the crowd noise supposed to artificially change based on what occurs on the field?

Turns out that MLB actually has a solution for that. And it’s awesome.

Fans will have the opportunity to boo the Houston Astros during the 2020 Major League Baseball season after all.

As Darren Rovell of Action Network shared, the league will incorporate how many fans are using its app and cheering or booing a specific team into the piped in crowd noise it will use in empty stadiums amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

New innovation from Major League Baseball will allow fans to cheer or boo in their app, ballpark staff can then match that up with the volume in the stadium. pic.twitter.com/YxqKTR7lYt

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) July 20, 2020

Very cool. Essentially, MLB’s app will let users note which team they’re supporting and then allow them to “cheer” or “boo” via the app. Their choices will then be reflected in the crowd audio that is piped into the stadium and heard on television broadcasts. Staff at the stadium will reflect viewer choices in near real time.

“Ballpark staff uses the ‘real-time’ fan sentiment to control/vary noise variation/levels at the ballpark,” is how the league described how teams will use the feature.

It won’t exactly be the raucous environments of Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but it is at least a way for fans to express their loyalties while they are watching from home instead of the bleachers.

I love this sort of thing. Still, one wonders if MLB is prepared for the potential of rival fuckery. After all, it might just be possible to setup an automated system that created a bunch of accounts for a rival team and then simply choose to boo all the time, ruining the broadcast. Hopefully the league has a method to guard against that sort of thing.

But if they don’t, this is me soliciting a guerrilla hacking group so we can go screw around with White Sox crowd levels.

Filed Under: baseball, covid-19, crowd noise, crowds, fans, pandemic, simulated noises
Companies: major league baseball, mlb

Major League Baseball's Obsession With Cashing In On Everything Has Harmed The Game's Popularity Online

from the let-it-go... dept

I don’t often mention it here, because it’s way off-topic, but I’m a bit obsessed with baseball — and only rarely does that cross over into a Techdirt related topic, such as when MLB tried to claim it owned stats (spoiler alert: it does not). Anyway, a month or two ago I came across a wonderful Twitter feed called @Jomboy_ who mostly tweets out (funny and clever) stuff about the NY Yankees, but also every day or so puts out really amazing and hilarious “breakdown” videos about events throughout baseball. These vignettes are usually less than two minutes long, and frequently feature what appear to be his amazingly accurate lip-reading skills (not to mention capturing little things happening in the background) and also a bit of well-placed profanity (if you happen to be listening in a workplace that might not appreciate that). I usually watch them on Twitter, but for embedding purposes, it’s easier to use YouTube (where he also posts the videos), so I’ll use some examples from there (and intersperse a few, because if you like baseball, they’re wonderful). Here’s one of his “breakdowns” of the only “intentional balk” I’ve ever seen:

I even randomly tweeted out that any baseball fans should check out his account just last week. And, of course, nothing in all of that makes this a Techdirt story. But I was somewhat amazed, just a day after I tweeted about Jomboy, to see an article at Fangraphs that is (1) all about Jomboy (whose real name is apparently Jimmy O’Brien) but, more importantly (2) totally relevant to Techdirt. Basically, it tells the story of how Major League Baseball’s obsessive desire to own and control everything (see earlier note about its silly, years-long failed battle to own freaking stats) is contributing to baseball’s continuing failure to be of any interest at all to a younger generation — in part because baseball content rarely has shown up on social media.

This might sound a bit surprising to folks who do follow the sports business market. From the outside, many people have pointed out that Major League Baseball was really the first major sports league to embrace the internet — and it did so successfully from a business standpoint. It built out MLB Advanced Media, which was such a good platform that other leagues even started using it, leading to it being called BAMTech, and Disney buying a majority share in 2017 for a big chunk of change. And, to be clear, MLB does a really good job with its streaming platform, that seems to work really well. But with that platform came way too much control — and it has leveraged that to shut down things happening outside of its control. And that includes a lot of fan stuff.

?Because they have such a successful system within, they neglected every other social media because they have their own platform,? says O?Brien. ?You couldn?t find a single MLB highlight on YouTube. There?s kids now that grew up not seeing baseball highlights for 10 years because they would have to go to MLB.com. Did you ever try to embed an MLB video back in the day? Or share it with a friend? It was, like, impossible.?

MLB has (thankfully) loosened the rules a bit over the past couple years, but only if you don’t make any money:

Until 2017, YouTube content like Jomboy?s would be unthinkable. And while rules are far more relaxed in 2019, there?s still no way baseball channels can monetize directly through the platform. MLB will claim and remove their videos, and after an arduous appeal process, the videos will either remain off the site or re-emerge days later with revenue split between the creator and MLB.

And of course, that means that copyright is stepping in and stopping fans from promoting the freaking game:

?MLBAM doesn?t make things too easy for us,? says Joseph Solano, another Yankees content creator who has found a following on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube under the name Joezmcfly. ?All the time, they will put up copyright claims on my videos. It?s gotten to the point that I?d rather not monetize, just so that I can get the content out there for the people.?

And you certainly understand the instinct. Control and copyright are direct. “I control it, I monetize it.” But one of the points we’ve tried to make going back two decades at this point, is that sometimes it helps to look at the bigger picture — and often a big part of that bigger pictures is that giving up a little short term control leads to better long-term outcomes.

As the article notes, the other sports, while perhaps not controlling everything, have realized that letting fans actually do this kind of thing attracts more fans and more interest to the overall game. And yet, Jimmy and the others profiled in the article feel like it’s an effort to promote baseball for free. That’s nuts.

Of course, this is nothing new. It actually goes back decades. People today are amazed to learn this, but it used to be considered perfectly fine for fans or third parties to make merchandise with team logos and such. But in a series of lawsuits starting in the 1960s through the 1980s, sports leagues freaked out, and decided they wanted to license every damn use. And while that was short-term profitable for the leagues, it hurt the ability of fans to show their own support.

For years, one of the key themes around here is just that you don’t have to get paid for every single use, and sometimes lessening control can lead to wider long-term benefits. Jomboy’s great videos demonstrate that. Are they infringing on MLB’s copyright? I’d argue they’re clearly fair use (and, no, the lame “without express written consent” to make use of “accounts or descriptions of the game” is not an issue here as they are legal nonsense that is mostly meaningless) and thus, MLB shouldn’t have any right to block the monetization efforts in the first place. But, in this day and age, it’s just not worth making a fair use fight just to get your YouTube revenue, which is unfortunate. Now that I’ve discovered Jomboy, I’m hoping he continues to make these videos — and it seems crazy that he has to hope that Major League Baseball will “let” him promote their sport in a fun, enjoyable way.

Filed Under: baseball, control, culture, fair use, fans, jomboy
Companies: major league baseball

Permission Culture Kills Off A Bunch Of Fun MLB 'Nickname Jerseys'

from the aborting-fun dept

With the direction of intellectual property rights in America generally being driven down a one-way street towards expansionism, the associated culture of permission has ridden sidecar. Unlike intellectual property rights, however, permission culture is bound not by statute and legal interpretation, but rather by the wider understanding of public opinion on those matters, which tend towards being flawed and uninformed. Still, permission culture counts even large corporate interests with lofty legal budgets among its victims.

See, for instance, the recent revelation that Major League Baseball’s upcoming “Players Weekend” jerseys, which will feature hip player nicknames on the backs of jerseys, will not feature all the nicknames players requested as MLB attempts to navigate the tumultuous trademark waters.

Major League Baseball is playing it safe with player nicknames that will adorn novelty uniforms during what it calls Players Weekend at the end of August. But there won’t be any nicknames that could possibly bring MLB trademark infringement troubles.

However, Philly.com reported that at least two Philadelphia Phillies players were denied their preferred nicknames because of intellectual property concerns. Zach Eflin and Hoby Milner wanted to wear the nicknames “Led Zeflin” and “Hoby Wan Kenobi” on their backs, but MLB nixed them. Promo Marketing Magazine reported that MLB rejected “Kojak” as a nickname for Adrian Beltre of the Texas Rangers. He’ll have to settle for “El Koja” instead.

Now, the article makes the point that this isn’t strictly about players having these names on their jerseys during games. It’s also about MLB being able to sell and market those jerseys and concerns that actually selling jerseys with those names would open up serious trademark actions. But whether or not that concern is actually valid is an open question. Entities like Led Zeppelin and LucasFilms/Disney are not remotely in the baseball business, even if they are in the apparel business. These names, however, are pretty clearly a form of parody, even if its the lame pun type of parody. There’s also zero in the way of potential customer confusion. This isn’t to say that there would be absolutely no merit to a trademark claim brought by those groups, but it should be obvious that how meritorious those claims are would require a fight in court to decide.

But those viewing this through the lens of the culture of permission will see the infringements here as obvious. After all, they are references to other works and that kind of fun cannot be had unless licenses are paid. It’s as though all of culture is constrained by some sort of first-to-file, or first-to-create standard, with fun gimmicks like Players Weekend in baseball living only at the pleasure of pure originality. Harm to others is not the concern; it’s all about squeezing every possible revenue stream out there.

Eric Ball, an intellectual property lawyer with Fenwick & West LLP, Mountain View, Calif., said that “Hoby Wan Kenobi” probably wouldn’t harm the Walt Disney Co.’s Star Wars trademark if it appeared on the player’s shirt.

“But it’s a source of licensing revenue that those companies could have used,” Ball said. “Also, it’s not necessarily three days, because how long will these jerseys stay in the MLB shops?”

As we said, that’s true, but the purpose of trademark is not and never was to keep anyone anywhere from ever making any money off of content that is not purely original and without nod or reference. But here we are. Thanks to permission culture.

Filed Under: permission culture, trademark
Companies: major league baseball

DHS/ICE Knew Its World Series 'Panty Raid' Was A Bad Idea; Pressured To Do So Anyway

from the to-secure-the-nation,-starting-with-the-trademarks dept

The Kansas City Royals’ long-delayed return to competitive baseballing coincided with one of the most ridiculous raids ever conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. Birdies, a Kansas City lingerie shop, was “visited” by DHS agents — working in conjunction with ICE — who seized a number of panties emblazoned with a handcrafted take on the Royals’ logo, along with the phrase “Take the Crown.”

The agents performing the raid didn’t seem all too enthused about their participation in this panty raid, according to the shop’s owner, Peregrine Honig.

She says you could tell “they [DHS agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

Honig also pointed out that many local law enforcement officers had purchased lingerie, including the supposedly-trademark infringing panties, without expressing concerns about IP violations or counterfeited goods.

The printing shop that made the panties for Birdies was also visited by DHS agents, who threatened the owner with six years in prison for “breaking copyright law” unless he consented to a warrantless search.

All of this culminated in plenty of unfavorable press coverage highlighting Homeland Security’s panty raid and how much “safer” we all were thanks to its intercession on behalf of the Kansas City Royals and Major League Baseball.

Aaron Gordon of Vice Sports has acquired DHS communications related to the infamous panty raid via a FOIA request. The internal emails contain an awesome mixture of self-congratulation, defensiveness, and the agency’s willingness to go above and beyond to please its “eager” partner in IP enforcement.

On October 16, five days before the raid, an anonymous ICE officer from the Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRC)—in the documents released, names of officers were redacted; an appeal has been filed to release the names of the officers involved—wrote an email with the subject “Op Team Player – world series update,” referring to Operation Team Player, ICE’s partnership with U.S. professional sports leagues to intercept counterfeit goods, including tickets and merchandise.

The unnamed officer wrote, “They [the Kansas City office] are trying to get their numbers up and will accept any leads for controlled delivery in Kansas or Missouri, even if they do not meet the criteria because the AUSA Prosecutor is eager.”

For the want of increased “numbers,” the DHS lowered its standards to raid a lingerie shop. That’s basically all there is to it. Without the prompting of an “eager” AUSA, this may never have happened.

Within hours of the raid, the story was already spreading across the internet. A blanket statement was composed for handling inquiries from the press: the usual “Go Team IP Enforcement” jingoism that accompanies ICE’s sporting event-related raids performed in close partnership with the MLB, NBA, NFL etc. But someone in the email chain knew the usual stuff wasn’t going to be nearly as effective in this case.

The headlines at the bottom of the email pretty much say it all. We’re going to be all over the news tomorrow for the wrong reasons. We’ll obviously try to spin this as an opportunity to discuss IPR, but the panty raid jokes will make it hard.

Apparently, ICE/DHS felt this particular narrative might be beyond its control. So it tried to drag Major League Baseball down with it.

On the same thread, at 9:57 PM, someone wrote, “We need MLB to step forward and throw some support for what we do. Let us get with our MLB contact and we’ll be proactive as we can re: media.” Someone with the title “Executive Associate Director of Homeland Security Investigations-ICE” replied, “Great idea. Let’s move on it.”

As Gordon notes, perhaps the hilarious part of the email chain is the agency’s severe underestimation of the internet’s thirst for stories containing (a) abuse of government power, or (b) women’s intimate garments — especially any combination of (a) and (b) that’s capable of composing its own headlines.

[S]omeone else on the same thread exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet’s interest in panty raids by writing, “So far it appears to have just localized press. Hopefully, it won’t make it out of the local news bubble.”

Well, hope in one hand and hold seized panties in the other, as they say. Still, one agent appeared to believe that the government’s panty raid was nothing more than a judicious use of Homeland Security assets and taxpayer dollars.

Excellent work, which speaks for itself!

Sure does. That’s why press coverage was unanimously negative. ICE, DHS and an “eager” AUSA joined forces with MLB to generate additional acronyms like “WTF” and “BS.” Americans were protected from unauthorized sportsball underwear — something than can only serve to increase their respect for intellectual property rights… and the sprawling, often-thuggish bureaucracies that enforce them.

Filed Under: counterfeit, dhs, ice, kansas city, panty raid, world series
Companies: major league baseball

Some Now Suggesting Cardinals Hack May Have Violated The Economic Espionage Act

from the uh-oh dept

After the revelation that the St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI for hacking into the Houston Astros’ networks and grabbing a whole bunch of proprietary statistical and scouting data, much of the speculation centered around one or two rogue employees, who may have used old passwords to get into the Astros’ systems. Those systems had been set up by the Astros’ new GM, who was a former Cardinals employee and who presumably just reused his passwords. With that speculation in mind, the focus then turned to how the feds might look to use the CFAA to go after those employees for having committed a federal crime. All of that would be serious enough in and of itself, except some of the details coming out of the investigation and some of the expert opinions on which laws may be brought to bear are making all of this look much more serious than even most people’s first take.

Much of the speculation that only an employee or two will face punishment under the CFAA has taken the form of something like this, from Alexander Southwell, a cybersecurity expert for law firm Gibson Dunn.

Southwell said the most likely charge would involve violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Cardinals would be unlikely to face criminal charges unless it could be proven that the team, and not an employee or group of employees, was behind the act, Southwell said.

“The entity can’t be held responsible for the acts of rogue employees,” he said.

But not everyone agrees with that. Much in the way that Sarbanes-Oxley was constructed to keep high-level executives from shirking their responsibility for the actions of the businesses they oversee, there are laws on the books that could be used to go after the Cardinals’ leadership not only if they had direct knowledge of this alleged hack, but also if they should have known about it but didn’t. Serious negligence would have to be proven on the part of the higher-ups still, but the bar is lower. Here’s the take from Nathaniel Grow, an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Georgia.

The alleged hacking may have also violated the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which criminalizes the theft or misappropriation of trade secrets. The data allegedly accessed by the Cardinals would appear to satisfy the legal definition of a trade secret, which covers any information that provides a business with a competitive advantage over its competitors and is not generally known by the public (for example, the recipe for Coca-Cola). The Astros’ proprietary statistical analysis and internal scouting reports would almost certainly qualify as trade secrets under this definition. . . Under the EEA, anyone who steals, copies, or downloads someone else’s trade secret information without permission faces a monetary fine and possible jail sentence of up to 10 years in prison per offense.

Perhaps more significantly, however, the EEA would also potentially allow the government to charge the entire Cardinals organization with criminal activity. As Section (b) of the law provides, “Any organization that commits any offense described in subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $5,000,000.“ In order to charge the entire organization with criminal activity, however, prosecutors would likely have to show that high-level Cardinals executives were aware of the hacking, or at least should have known that it was going on. If that is the case, then the entire team could face criminal prosecution. But if the hacking were simply carried out by a few lower-level team officials, without the knowledge of any higher-ups, then any organization-wide criminal case would be unlikely.

Complicating all of this further is the combination of Major League Baseball’s antitrust status, which in part hinges on the notion that MLB acts as an umbrella organization under which the franchises operate. One of the questions that’s been raised is whether or not the EEA could be invoked in this situation due to that organizational architecture. After all, two different people might own McDonald’s franchises, but it would hardly make sense if one sued the other for stealing “trade secrets” when they’re both McDonald’s. Are the two teams competitors or are they different entities within the same organization?

Either way, the more that comes out, the more it’s becoming clear that the FBI has someone or some people in the Cardinals organization dead to rights. The question is going to end up being how many are punished and under what laws they are prosecuted.

Filed Under: astros, cardinals, cfaa, criminal, economic espionage, trade secrets
Companies: houston astros, major league baseball, st. louis cardinals

The Cardinal Way: FBI Investigating STL Cardinals For Hacking Into Astros Database

from the running-redbirds dept

If you’re a baseball fan, as all good Americans are, and you have never lived in St. Louis, you probably hate the Cardinals. Don’t feel bad if you do, they’re quite easy to hate. No other fanbase has managed to coax platitudes out of the team and local media like the common refrain that Cards fans are “the best fans in baseball.” Groan. Few other teams outside of college football programs tend to go on and on about “the Cardinal way” and how they “do things the right way” like the redbirds do. The problem is that the Cardinals have been an excellent baseball team for pretty much ever, always managing success with a minimal number of lean years.

Perhaps it’s partly because they’re cheaters on the level of committing federal crimes in order to gain an advantage — at least according to reports coming out today. The news broke today that the FBI has become involved in investigating whether members of the Cardinals front office illegally gained entry to a proprietary database on player files, projections, statistics and trade maps owned by the Houston Astros.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

Even those of you not prone to caring about professional sports will likely recognize that this is a full-on shit-hitting-fan moment for a professional organization. The “hack”, as it’s being called, is the kind of low-tech stuff that most of these stories involve, but that doesn’t change the fact that this situation seems to be the exact kind of thing the CFAA was designed around. The background on this is that Astros General Manager used to work for the Cardinals, where he developed this database of statistics and scouting methods. When the Astros hired him away, he ported his work over to be used with his new franchise. Somehow he was allowed to use the exact same passwords from his Cardinals days, which allowed somebody from the rival team to log in and begin pulling data. Ten months ago, that data was, for some reason, released into the wild, embarrassing the Astros and yanking away any advantage the proprietary system might have yielded them. The Astros reported the hack to the league office, which involved the FBI.

Word from early on in the FBI’s investigation seems to leave little doubt that someone at the Cardinals, if not many someones, is involved. Oh, and very, very stupidly involved, too.

The Cardinals front-office executives who hacked into the Astros’ database are extremely dumb. You can’t even give them credit for being l337 H4x0rs because all these dummies did was use one of the old passwords Astros GM Jeff Luhnow used when he worked for the Cardinals, and they did it from their own goddamn home, which made it very easy for FBI to track them down. Here is a tip: If you’re going to commit corporate espionage, don’t do it from your home computer. Go find, like, an internet cafe or something.

But the thing about the CFAA is that its punishment doesn’t correct for technical proficiency, so a “low-level hack,” as this is being called, is still a hack and still falls under the law’s purview. Dumb sports team or not, this is a federal crime, and the fact that people are going to lose their jobs may be the least of those peoples’ concerns. We could be talking about real jail time here.

Regardless, the Cardinals way is dead, unable to pull itself from a muck of its own making.

Filed Under: baseball, cfaa, fbi, hacking
Companies: houston astros, major league baseball, st. louis cardinals

MLB Claims That Finance Company's 'W' Logo Violates 2 MLB Teams' Trademarks

from the 2-too-many dept

Let’s play out a little thought experiment. Let’s say that a corporation involved in the money business has a logo for themselves. Now, let’s say that two separate trademark holders both claim that this company’s logo is too similar to their own. However, let’s also stipulate in this scenario that the two offended trademark holders, who both claim similarity concerns with the finance company’s logo, aren’t bothering to file against each other for trademark claims, even though both are intimately knowledgeable of the other. Now, just to really make all this as face-palming-ly silly as possible, let’s consider that these are the three logos in question:

Well, this isn’t a thought experiment, it’s actually happening, and it is maddeningly silly. The top left image is a registered logo for the Washington Nationals baseball team, the bottom left is the registered “W” flag the Chicago Cubs fly on the rare occassion they win anything, and the logo on the right is that of Evolution Finance’s website, WalletHub, through which users can compare credit card prices and get financial advice. So what’s the problem, you ask?

Evolution Finance has been locked in a trademark dispute with lawyers representing the Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs for two years after Major League Baseball, on behalf of the teams, opposed their attempt to trademark the white-and-green logo. The league asserts that the WalletHub logo bears a strong resemblance to Ws trademarked by the two teams, and that granting Evolution Finance rights to use the mark without restrictions could create confusion for customers and complications for both businesses.

So many issues here, one struggles to know where to begin. Let’s start with the fact that Evolution Finance is as much in the baseball business as it is in the puppy-murdering business, which is to say not at freaking all. “I came here to buy baseball tickets and I ended up transitioning my 401k into a personal Roth IRA on the basis of better returns in the bonds market” is a phrase that is nearly impossible to even have imagined, thus showing the extreme and dangerous power of dumb ass trademark claims. Add to it that half the problem appears to be that a trademark was granted on what barely amounts to more than a letter and we’ve already got issues with MLB’s claims.

But to really make this a head-scratcher, I’m trying to figure out why the two teams, who actually are in the same market, are being allowed to make this claim when they haven’t bothered to go after each other over their respective marks. I mean, the obvious answer is that the league likely wants the two teams to play nice over the Ws each as trademarked, but that shouldn’t make anyone more comfortable with a specious move attacking a company that isn’t in their market.

“It is common for trademark owners to sometimes overreach in protecting their marks,” said S. Lloyd Smith, an attorney at Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney who represents Evolution Finance. “They’re always concerned or cautious that if they don’t enforce their marks they might lose their rights. The real question is why does MLB care?” Smith said. “They don’t own the letter W. There’s lots of other Ws out there. They’re just plainly overreaching in this case.”

Overreaching and fanning on a curve ball for strike three, more like it.

Filed Under: baseball, cubs, finance, logo, nationals, trademark, w, win
Companies: chicago cubs, evolution finance, major league baseball, mlb, washington nationals

DHS Agents Raid Lingerie Shop, Save America From Unlicensed Underwear

from the ever-vigilant-agency-on-top-of-nation's-bottoms dept

Your homeland has never been more secure. (h/t to Techdirt reader jupiterkansas)

“They came in and there were two guys” Honig said. “I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside. They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.”

Peregrine Honig runs a lingerie shop in Kansas City. Not coincidentally, her shop was raided by DHS agents just as the World Series commenced. The target? “Boy shorts” sporting an approximation of the Kansas City Royals logo as well as the cheekily-applied phrase (yes, pun completely intended) “Take the crown.”

For purely illustrative purposes, here’s the last known photo of the item now in the temporary possession of the Dept. of Homeland Security.

They placed the underwear in an official Homeland Security bag and had Honig sign a statement saying she wouldn’t use the logo.

Which she technically didn’t. It was her own drawing, but the DHS agents pointed out that “connecting the K and C” turned it into the protected property of a major league baseball franchise.

Up until the fortuitously-timed DHS raid, Honig had experienced no problems with law enforcement.

“We’d had so many cops come in and buy these,” Peregrine Honig says.

The DHS has yet to comment on its pre-World Series panty raid. Neither has ICE, which is also usually fairly active in the days leading up to major sporting events. Neither agency has bothered to issue a press release about the hard work done in service to the multibillion-dollar entities currently attempting to “take the crown.”

Honig, however, has provided plenty of color commentary, including the fact that these particular DHS agents didn’t appear to be reveling in their petty IP enforcement efforts.

She says you could tell “they [DHS agents] felt like they were kicking a puppy.”

At least there’s still a little shame left in overzealous trademark enforcement. This is part of what your $39 billion a year in mandatory contributions gets you: a few dozen pairs of underwear seized, most likely at a cost exceeding the retail value of the “counterfeit” goods.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, lingerie, royals, trademark, underwear, world series
Companies: major league baseball

NY Yankees: It's Insulting To Call Us The Evil Empire… But It's Also Trademark Infringement

from the pick-one dept

Ah, the NY Yankees. I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m actually a big Yankees baseball fan (last night’s loss sucked), but sometimes the team (like all of Major League Baseball) does stupid things with intellectual property law. The latest is a report that the team (and Major League Baseball) are trying to deny a trademark to a couple who is selling anti-Yankee gear (mainly to Red Sox fans) using the term “Evil Empire.” The Yankees are, quite amazingly, suggesting that this infringes on their own trademarks, while at the same time claiming that “evil empire” reflects poorly on the team.

This whole thing seems pretty crazy. As the Deadspin article linked above notes, “Evil Empire” is a phrase first used by Ronald Reagan and has since been used in a variety of ways. For the past few years, it’s been used a few times in reference to the Yankees, starting with a statement from Red Sox President Larry Lucchino, after the Yankees beat out the Red Sox in pursuit of pitcher Jose Contreras (who never turned out to be as good as advertised anyway). But it’s just a silly thing among fans. Some Yankee fans have embraced the “Evil Empire” tag, while Yankee haters like to use it to express their displeasure with the team. Either way, having anti-fans mock the Yankees with “Evil Empire” merchandise hardly seems like a bad thing (and I say that, again, as a fan). It’s part of what keeps the rivalry going.

The term “evil empire” has a negative connotation because the word “evil” refers to that which is morally wrong or bad, immoral, wicked, harmful and/or injurious. The BASEBALLS EVIL EMPIRE mark will be understood to refer to the Club, and, upon information and belief, is clearly intended to do so, and thus may disparage Opposer[The Yankees], or bring Opposer into contempt or disrepute among a significant segment of the consuming public.

Of course, at the same time, even as they say that it’s got a negative connotation, they claim they’re also worried that people will think it’s legitimate Yankee merchandise. I really don’t see how that’s possible though.

the Yankees hold that the phrase is so connected with the Yankees that people “are likely to believe that Applicant’s goods, which are identical and/or closely related to the goods offered and services rendered in connection with the Club’s marks, have their origin with Opposer and/or that such goods are approved, endorsed or sponsored by Opposer”–that the average fan, seeing shirts with the words “Evil Empire” and an altered logo, would assume the Yankees were selling the shirts.

So… either “Evil Empire” hurts the reputation of the team, or it’s so closely connected to the team that it’s effectively a common law trademark?

Of course, what this really comes down to is pure greed. It was really just a few decades ago that fans were able to make their own shirts supporting (or denigrating) teams, and it was considered perfectly reasonable. But, as we’ve discussed, that all changed in the 80s, when sports teams suddenly decided that they wanted you to pay to cheer (or boo) any particular team.

In this case, the folks selling the Evil Empire gear are going to try to defend their efforts claiming it’s protected use as a “parody.” I really have no idea how well that will hold up at the Trademark Office (or, eventually, in court), but just the fact that this is even in dispute seems pretty silly.

Filed Under: baseball, evil empire, ny yankees, trademark
Companies: major league baseball, ny yankees

Major League Baseball Claims Dodgers Still Own Trademark On Brooklyn Logo, Despite Leaving Town 53 Years Ago

from the brooklyn-bums dept

A few folks sent in the story from the NY Daily News saying that the Los Angeles Dodgers had filed a lawsuit against the owners of Brooklyn Burger, for using a version of the old stylized “Brooklyn” logo as part of its own logo:

Of course, (not surprisingly) it appears that the NY Daily News account is not accurate. Apparently it’s actually Major League Baseball who put in the claim “on behalf of the Dodgers.” It’s also not quite a lawsuit, but just an opposition to the trademark filed by the burger place. MLB’s reasoning is the standard cop out from companies asserting trademark claims in questionable situations, as they say “oh we have to do this.”

“As MLB, we are obligated by law to protect our trademarks or we are at risk of losing them.”

Of course, this ignores the bigger point, which is that the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957 and haven’t used the logo since then. On top of that, it’s not at all clear that the Dodger’s original trademarked logo would cover food at all. And, of course, it’s not as if anyone (moron in a hurry or not) would rush by the Brooklyn Burger restaurant and think “gee, the Dodgers have opened a restaurant!” The whole thing feels like yet another (in a long line of) intellectual property overreaches by Major League Baseball.

Filed Under: brooklyn, dodgers, trademark
Companies: brooklyn burger, major league baseball