The Legal Dugout: Baseball’s Intellectual Property All Stars

A baseball game is 90 feet between bases and a lifetime of stories in the box score, but the biggest action often happens off the field. We’re looking at the invisible game that keeps baseball’s culture and business running: intellectual property law. From broadcast rights to team branding, we connect the dots between trademarks, patents, copyright, and licensing, and we show how those tools can protect creativity without locking up the sport itself.We start with sports data and two court decisions that quietly shaped modern fandom. MLB v Motorola draws a hard line between a copyrighted broadcast and the unownable facts of the game, helping make live score apps and real time updates possible. Then CBC v MLBAM tackles fantasy baseball and the right of publicity, explaining why player names and statistics can be used as part of public sports conversation when there’s no false endorsement. If you’ve ever checked a score on your phone or built a fantasy roster, these rulings helped set the rules of the road.From there we zoom out to the products and symbols fans carry everywhere. Trading cards reveal a stack of licensing layers, from player likeness rights to team trademarks to copyrighted photography. The Padres’ Swinging Friar shows why mascots and logos are serious trademark assets, while Louisville Slugger highlights how patents reward the small design changes that can matter in performance. We also talk about baseball storytelling through film, including A League of Their Own, and how copyright and licensing can preserve cultural memory. Finally, we bring it into the sports betting era, where “official” data feeds become valuable through contracts and carefully built data systems.If you like sports law, sports business, or the way innovation spreads through culture, subscribe, share this with a friend who loves baseball, and leave a review so more listeners can find Intangibilia.Send us Fan MailCheck out "Protection for the Inventive Mind" – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.The views and opinions expressed (by the host and guest(s)) in this podcast are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the entities with which they may be affiliated. This podcast should in no way be construed as promoting or criticizing any particular government policy, institutional position, private interest or commercial entity. Any content provided is for informational and educational purposes only.