STAR India sent out notices to mobile application developers, following the Delhi High Court judgment which granted the company limited, exclusive rights over Cricket scores and commentary. What is interesting about this notice is that STAR is claiming that no entity has the rights to, for a charge, fee or other premium, provide ball-by-ball or other score or incident updates or alerts within 15 minutes from the moment that such updates or alerts have been broadcast by STAR; or (provide) live or near-live match scorecards or match score feeds of any nature. It appears that STAR is saying that even scorecards or match score feeds, irrespective of the 15 minute delay, cannot be provided. The Delhi High Court had ordered (read about it here, and our take on it here): a. A limited interim injunction restraining the defendants from disseminating contemporaneous match information in the form of ball-by-ball or minute-by-minute score updates/match alerts for a premium, without obtaining a license from the plaintiff. b. There shall be no restriction upon the defendants to report noteworthy information or news from cricket matches (as discussed in paragraph 49), as and when they arise, because stale news is no news. c. There shall be no requirement for the license if the defendants do it gratuitously or after a time lag of 15 minutes. While discussions in court were only focused on SMS updates for a premium, readers should note that as we had pointed out, the judgment appears to encompass all mobile technology,…
