The “Baseball” application maker for the iPhone, Mark Knoppe of Bulbous Ventures, an small computer software maker received a Cease and Desist letter from MLB demanding him inmediate removal of all baseball teams and MLB logos. Baseball is a free application that can be downloaded from the Apple’s AppStore.

This is the most interesting part, Baseball compete directly with MLB application called “At Bat” what will provide statitics and real time information about baseball, while MLB has all the right in the World to protect its brands and defend their intelectual property only if others people profit from them without any permission, why knock someboy out if this person is just doing an excellent job providing baseball information free of charge?

Baseball may not be the best iphone application, but provide a big chunk of baseball information in an easy to read and follow way and while it infringes using the logos property of MLB this situation could be resolved in a friendly manner because Mr. Knoppe wasn’t profiting with this little app and it only help baseball fans to stay updated with on hand application, but sometimes big corporations don’t think in any other thing than money and don’t take their fans at heart.

This is common to MLB, this past June MLB suit a small fantasy baseball company calle CBC claiming that CBC was using baseball’s players names without their permission:

Extracted from CNET’s Anne Broache article: Supreme Court rejects fantasy baseball dispute.

MLB’s Internet media arm, later joined by the pro-baseball players’ union, had claimed that C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing–a Missouri company that sells fantasy sports products via the Web, e-mail, regular mail, and phone–was using baseball players’ names and statistics without a license, thereby violating the players’ rights to publicity under state intellectual property laws. (A right to publicity, of course, is a person’s right to control and profit from the commercial use of his name and likeness.)

The original lawsuit actually came from C.B.C. The company sued MLB after the pro baseball association began providing fantasy baseball games on its own Web site. MLB offered C.B.C. a license only to promote MLB’s products, not to continue selling its own fantasy baseball games. Fearing a lawsuit from MLB if it continued business as usual, C.B.C. filed its own suit.

C.B.C. won at the district court level and again last year at the appeals court level, which held that the company’s “first amendment rights in offering its

Read the CNET article here: http://news.cnet.com/newsblog/?keyword=Major+League+Baseball

So this could be the same situation, knock out Mark Knoppe’s Baseball and be the only supplier of baseball information with the “MLB At Bat” iphone application.

End of the story: Baseball will end up being more downloaded than At Bat because MLB is giving an unnecesary buzz with the cease and desist letter.

By the way, you can download both applications at the AppStore.

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