How do professional sports leagues in the U.S. avoid anti-trust action? The National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) are, essentially, professional sports monopolies. How have they avoided anti-trust action by the federal government? (Or have they?)
Well baseball for historical and frankly crazy decisions of SCOTUS is exempt because it is not a business that crosses state lines (by definition of the court if by no one else's). The other sports have had their run-ins with antitrust laws; some they've won and some they've lost. All of these have been to do with antitrust provisions in restraint of trade between leagues and clubs and clubs and players. As for monopoly powers: The elements of monopolization are twofold: possession of monopoly power in a relevant market; and willfully acquiring or maintaining that power. There are two clear defences to allegations of running a monopoly: the definition of the market - if the market is defined as &quot;baseball&quot; then there is a clear monopoly, however, if the market is &quot;professional sports&quot; it is not so clear that there is a monopoly. Certainly, both definitions of market are arguable. that the monopoly was &quot;the result of superior skill, foresight, and industry&quot;. These types of monopoly are allowed as the acquisition of monopoly power was not willfull.
Generally, yes Can players and coaches be held criminally liable for actions that they take beyond the scope of their game? Yes. For example, Todd Bertuzzi was convicted with assault causing bodily harm for punching Steve Moore. Since that event happened in British Columbia, it was a British Columbia court that had jurisdiction. In 2000, Marty McSorley was found guilty of assault for slashing another player in the head with his stick. This also happened in British Columbia: R. v. McSorley, 2000 BCPC 116. The judge quoted an older case, saying: Patently, when one engages in a hockey game, one accepts that some assaults, which would otherwise be criminal, will occur and consents to such assaults. It is equally patent, however, that to engage in a game of hockey is not to enter a forum to which the criminal law does not extend. To hold otherwise would be to create the hockey arena a sanctuary for unbridled violence to which the law of Parliament and the Queen's justice could not apply. The judge recognized that there is an &quot;unwritten code of conduct agreed to by the players and officials&quot; including norms of fighting, but that McSorley's actions were outside of those norms. Even a slash directed at the upper shoulder area was too risky (that it might miss, and instead hit the head) to be covered under any consent. A rugby player was convicted of manslaughter when he aimed to &quot;Pile drive [an opponent] hardest I could into ground&quot; and ended up causing his death: R. v. C.(C.), 2009 ONCJ 249. The judge noted that consent will be implied &quot;with respect to force that is outside the rules but within the scope of the accepted standards by which the game is played.&quot; He also found that &quot;[t]he defendant intentionally applied force that was outside the rules of the game or any standard by which the game is played. [The deceased] did not explicitly consent to that force and I am satisfied beyond any doubt that no such consent can be implied.&quot; The issue will be what degree of contact and force was consented to. The factors often cited come from R. v. Cey, 1989 SKCA: the game of hockey involves a continuous series of assaults. Obviously, most of the body contact is consented to merely by the decision to participate in the sport. To determine at what point this consent disappears is not an easy task, but it must be identified in order to determine when a player moves from conduct calling for the imposition of a penalty into conduct which involves a criminal assault calling for a criminal conviction and sentence The conditions under which the game in question is played, the nature of the act which forms the subject-matter of the charge, the extent of the force employed, the degree of risk of injury, and the probabilities of serious harm are, of course, all matters of fact to be determined with reference to the whole of the circumstances. In large part, they form the ingredients which ought to be looked to in determining whether in all of the circumstances the ambit of the consent at issue in any given case was exceeded. Bountygate seems trickier The rest of this is opinion and is less well researched. I do not believe the above theory of liability (assault vitiating implied consent) is easily applicable to the circumstances of of Bountygate. First, I am not sure this theory of assault is applied in the United States. Second, it seems to me that there would be near insurmountable evidentiary hurdles in establishing that any particular tackle was motivated by an intent to injure (normally, ulterior intent is irrelevant for assault, but it seems to be a factor in considering whether implied consent has been vitiated in the sports context). However, there may be some kind of conspiracy-based offence available. Given that the offence would have happened entirely in the United States, it would be state or U.S. federal law that would apply and I will need to leave it to another answer to fill in the details of this theory, if it would indeed be viable.
The answer is more complicated than you may think. The over riding controlling authority is the Law of the Seas treaty signed by almost all nations but not ratified by the US (mainly because the LOS requires equal distribution of mineral wealth in the oceans). A lot of what the LOS covers is what is called the COLREGS which are basically traffic laws for vessels on the oceans. But COLREGS are applicable in some, but not all US federal, state, and local harbors. While the US Coast Guard is the primary enforcer of these laws in the US plenty of other law enforcement agencies have agreements with the USCG to enforce the rules. While you mentioned a local county agency that has agreements to enforce this, and other laws, so do a host of other agencies. In Florida the FWC is the primary enforcement agency for Florida laws and has an agreement with the USCG and other federal agencies to enforce not just Florida laws but US laws as well. One historic area of conflict has been fishing laws. The US claims a 200 mile economic zone and enforces fishing laws, which sometimes conflict with Florida laws (things like how big a fish must be and how many you can catch and when you can catch them). The FWC has a much greater presence on the water and the USCG does not really deal that much with fishing. On the other hand the USCG spends lots of time with drug interdiction and illegal alien interdiction. As an example of how convoluted this can get I was in the Dry Tortugas when the FWC boarded a commercial fishing boat anchored close to me. The Dry Tortugas is a National Park so under federal jurisdiction and the fishing boat had anchored rather late at night and turned on it's working lights and and was loudly running a water pump during turtle egg laying season so the rangers in the park called the FWC to come down hard on the boat. The only violation the FWC found was a pistol on the commercial boat (firearms are prohibited in the National Park). Another example is that according to Florida Law a boat in a recognized anchorage on a mooring ball does not need to display an anchor light after sunset. While Boot Key Harbor in the Keys is a recognized anchorage run by the city of Marathon it is under COLREGs and you must display an anchor light on a mooring ball; something that I have seen enforced by both USCG and FWC. On the East Coast of Florida in the crowded ICW both city and county LEOs in boats enforce things like speed limits and boating while under the influence; not to mention drug enforcement. Bottom line is while federal, state, and local laws are not always the same there are wide spread agreements that agencies from all three levels of government can and do enforce each others laws.
I'll ignore whether a recipe is actually a good example, but I assume you're asking how a person who owns the exclusive rights to copy a thing (copyright) or to use a thing (patent) can allow multiple other entities to copy or use the thing. This is possible by granting each a non-exclusive licence. In the case that the piece of knowledge is not protected by any intellectual property regime, the holder of the information could just treat it as a secret. The information holder could enter into contracts to sell that information to various entities, each promising in return not to further disclose that information. This is the case for lots of sports data.
Law is more like sport than mathematics You don’t know how it will turn out until you play the game. If a case goes to trial it’s because at both sides believe they can win. Both sides probably have good reasons for their belief. At least one of them is wrong.
This is known as a retroactive or ex post facto law. Such laws are explicitly forbidden by the US Constitution (Wikipedia reference), and are generally frowned on in jurisdictions where the rule of law applies, partly because it is difficult to prove criminal intent when your action was not at the time criminal.
From the link, it appeared that: Payments were made so that exam answers would be corrected before marking Payments were made to have an athletic offer extended for a person who would not otherwise qualify. Fraud and bribery are both applicable crimes. Victims are not necessary for either crime.
We cannot and will not try to answer &quot;what should i do?&quot; questions here. Nothing in the linked page makes me think that the views expressed in the previous question here are any less correct. They certainly have not changed the law on copyright. The linked page is an open forum. Many of the posts o9n that thread express ill-informed and incorrect views of how copyright works, and what it protects. Several google searchs find no trace of the suit described in the thread. Note that in US law no copyright claim may be heard in a small claims court, except for the federal copyright office's small claims tribunal. I am not sure if the same is true in Canada, but it might be that the suit was simply dismissed on such a basis. In any case small claims cases do not establish legal precedents in Canada or the US. Of course it is true that anyone can sue over almost anything, even when there is no valid legal basis for the suit. If the suit had been won by the claimant, or even settled that would be larger grounds for worry. A person seriously worried over publishing a book such as that described in the question might do well to consult a lawyer with relevant expertise. A single consultation plus an opinion letter might not cost very much. But 17 USC 102 (b) is very clear that copyright never protects facts, as are the copyright laws of other countries. Note that reports of the events of sports matches are not protected by copyright, although expressive language and analysis may be. 17 USC 102 (b) reads: (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Article 2 paragraph (8) of the Berne Copyright Convention provides that: (8) The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information. There seems little room for copyright protection of the moves of chess games.