National Basketball Association v. Motorola, Inc.

Motorola, together with Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems (STATS) (defendants), developed the SportsTrax pager, which transmitted real-time statistical updates on in-progress professional basketball games administered by the NBA (plaintiff); after licensing talks over expanding SportsTrax into basketball fell through, Motorola and STATS generated and transmitted NBA statistics themselves without a license for the 1995-96 season, prompting the NBA to sue for violations of federal copyright and trademark law as well as New York's common-law misappropriation doctrine. The district court ruled for the NBA on the state misappropriation claim (finding it not preempted by the Copyright Act and that the defendants had engaged in unlawful misappropriation under New York law) and enjoined the defendants from transmitting NBA statistical data, and the defendants appealed. NOTE: the source document presented this case twice under two related Rule of Law framings addressing (1) whether narrow 'hot news' claims survive Copyright Act preemption at all, and (2) the general preemption test applicable to state misappropriation claims; the two framings, sharing an identical citation, court, year, and judge, are merged into this single, comprehensive entry.