Court lifts stay on cricket score updates through SMS

Category: SMS | No Comments | Posted on February 12, 2006

The Madras High Court has lifted the stay on 18 telecom companies from sending SMS of match alerts for the India-Pakistan one-day series saying the company had preferred the suit belatedly, without disclosing all material facts.

However, the court made it clear that SMS was the exclusive right of event organisers and that mobile operators could not exploit it for commercial purposes.

Describing the SMS rights as the “first of its kind,” Ms. Justice Banumathi said:

This court is of the view that the information made available over SMS is collected only from the games telecast over television. So the SMS right is the exclusive right of the organisers. Scores and facts, though in the public domain, are gathered from the telecast series … such hot news/scores create a narrow quasi property right in news which may not be copyrighted … mobile phone operators cannot exploit the game by sending scores or the alerts through SMS technology and exploit it for commercial purposes.’

Marksman counsel argued that real-time match alerts were time-sensitive information requiring special protection. The telecom companies were attempting to misappropriate the information for commercial exploitation, he said. The BCCI said SMS was a “textual right” such as telecast or audio rights. He said that even the BCCI might auction such rights.

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