Football Media

NetResult, Premier League’s Internet Watchdog, goes after The Offside

13/2/09

NetResult has made a name for itself (inadvertently, but still) as a nuisance to football bloggers. They complain to YouTube when you upload clips of Premier League goals, they send you legal warnings when you put up Premier League and Football League club crests on your site, and they have been known to send your webhosts DMCA notices if you put up Premier League fixtures on your site as well.

In the past they’ve come after 101GreatGoals.com, Soccerlens.com, SoccerNews.com and RedRants.com, just to name a few. This time they went after our friends TheOffside.com (read more here). There are a few interesting aspects (from a footballing and legal perspective) that are worth sharing here.

For starters, there’s the obvious – NetResult not lawyers – they are an online copyright protection agency (there’s a difference!) hired by Football Data Co Ltd, which in turn is hired by the UK football leagues (FA Premier League, the Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League), who in turn have the clubs making decisions as a collective. To think that the Premier League is the big bully and that clubs will gladly let you use their logo on your website is extremely naive – a minority may allow it in rare cases but by and large football clubs have business people in charge of making these decisions and they know that their logo, their brand, has a certain commercial value and they’re not going to give it up for free when they are making money through their respective leagues by selling rights for usage of that brand.

In short, NetResult is DIRECTLY representing the interests of Arsenal FC (some Arsenal blogs have been asked by Arsenal.com personnel to remove all logos), Manchester United FC (I’ve had manutd.com personnel contact Soccerlens about unauthorised usage of their crest), Liverpool FC (who are trying to register as trademark the liverbird image on their crest), Chelsea FC – all down to Watford, Barnsley and relegation-threatened League Two clubs.

Secondly, from my understanding of intellectual property rights and how they apply in US and UK, fair use is interpreted differently depending on which side of the pond you’re on. In the US, you have more wiggle room to use, say, a partial fixture list, player images from Getty or club logos as part of your news coverage than you do in the UK. Now the letter that the TheOffside have reprinted has this to say:

I, Jack Xxxxxx, as a representative of NetResult hereby digitally sign this e-mail message under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America with the additional statement under penalty of perjury that the information in the notice is accurate.

Again, I’m not a lawyer, but if NetResult are asking TheOffside to remove the logos while submitting themselves to US laws, TheOffside stands a good chance of arguing against and winning the case for fair use of the logos, provided that they can prove that their usage is part of their news reporting for informational purposes only and not for commercial gain.

You can read more about the fair use doctrine and its application under the US Copyright Law here. Judging logo use under the four points mentioned here, since The Offside is using the logos as identification of site sections (informational) and because their usage of the logos does not have a negative impact on the value of the brand (in terms of what the clubs / Premier League can charge for commercial usage of those logos), The Offside does not need to remove the logos.

Daryl, Chris and Laurie may not have high-paid lawyers but I imagine that the parent company BootsnAll definitely does, so it’s worth pursuing. What do you say Sean?

And while we’re on the subject, fair use would not apply to fixtures (their usage is commercial if you’re getting search traffic for them and you’re displaying ads on your site, while making them publicly available on every site means that the media houses they sell the fixture lists to wouldn’t pay as much to buy the rights, thus reducing the value of the copyrighted work).

Further Reading:

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business, Internet

Comments:

  • Comment by: Jim
    February 14, 2009 @ 19:08

    Thanks for the write up and the support. I’ve contacted Rovers myself hoping some sense will prevail.

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