14 DAY TRIAL // Another lawsuit was dismissed today, after MLB manager Tony La Russa dropped the suit against Twitter, as Yahoo has settled with the National Football League's (NFL) players union. Yahoo filed a suit last month claiming it shouldn't have to pay to use the player names and other data in its fantasy football league. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"We did reach a settlement and we are going to explore other opportunities with the NFL players union to work together," Yahoo! Sports spokeswoman Nicole Addison said, according to Reuters, after initially refusing to comment on the case. "NFL Players and Yahoo! have reached a settlement. We continue to explore additional opportunities to work together," Andrew Feffer, chief operating officer of NFL Players, also said.
It's not clear if the settlement included any sort of payment from Yahoo to the players union or if the company got the results it was looking for and got the union to refrain from further pressure for licensing.
The suit was filed in the Minnesota federal court in June to counter litigation threats made by the NFL players union claiming that Yahoo had to pay to use the players' names, photos and statistics in its fantasy football game. The two parties had a previous agreement but it expired in March 2009 and Yahoo refused to renew it saying it shouldn't have to pay for the information already made public.
The move came after a similar lawsuit filed by CBS Interactive was won by the media company in April with the court ruling that CBS wasn't obligated to pay for publicly available data. That ruling was appealed by the NFL players union and the legal proceedings are currently ongoing; however, it gave Yahoo the confidence that it would be successful too.