NEW YORK-The NBA won its lawsuit against Motorola Inc. last week, with a judge ruling the electronics company “engaged in unlawful conduct” with its pager-like device that provides accounts of games.
Judge Loretta Preska, in her decision in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said Motorola must stop using the handheld pager that simulates action during NBA games.
Early last year, Motorola unveiled SportsTrax, a wireless pager that delivers batter-by-batter status of major league baseball games. Motorola began to transmit accounts of basketball games this season over SportsTrax.
The lawsuit, filed by the NBA and its marketing arm, NBA Properties Inc., alleged the service is not licensed or authorized by the league to provide play-by-play descriptions of games to its customers.
Motorola contended that SportsTrax is simply another version of the evening news, but Preska called the contention “utterly unpersuasive.”
“I find without hesitation that their product crosses the boundary from mere media coverage of the NBA games into competing commercial misappropriation of these games,” Preska said.
The NBA sought and was granted a permanent injunction against Motorola of Schaumburg, Ill., and STATS Inc., a Skokie, Ill., company that assembles the information. However, unspecified damages and other claims of relief were denied.
The paging device can produce a visual display of where the ball is at each moment during a game. Customers can buy three-year subscriptions to the service for $200.
“This $200 toy competes with the NBA’s wholly legitimate efforts to reap where it has sown,” Preska said.
The NBA filed the lawsuit against Motorola’s SportsTrax company several months ago.
A spokeswoman for Motorola’s SportsTrax said it is too early for Motorola to know what if any action it may take to maintain its NBA SportsTrax pager product. “Motorola is discussing its next step,” she added.
SportsTrax for basketball was introduced the beginning of the year and has a limited subscribership. A Motorola spokesman said he did not know whether the company plans to reimburse its customers owning basketball versions of SportsTrax
He added that no problems have occurred in Major League Baseball associated with SportsTrax for baseball. “A lot of people are worried about the baseball [product], but baseball is still going strong.”
