Appeals court upholds ruling for PGA in golf-score case

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Posted 6:54AM on Friday, April 2, 2004

ATLANTA - The PGA Tour has won the latest federal court challenge to its control over the release of real-time golf scores at its tournaments. Morris Communications, a family-owned multimedia company headquartered in Augusta, Ga., filed a lawsuit against the Tour, arguing it was monopolistic in dispensing its golf scores. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in its ruling Wednesday. The Tour uses a complicated system at its tournaments that compiles scores after golfers finish each hole. The Tour immediately makes the scores available to news media, asking that they not report them until they are posted on the Tour's official Web site, or until 30 minutes have passed. Morris wanted to sell the real-time scores before they appeared on the Tour's Web site without compensating the PGA. ``That is the classic example of 'free-riding,''' Circuit Judge Joel Dubina wrote in the panel's opinion. Morris had access to the scores at onsite PGA tournament media centers. The scores were being syndicated by Morris and sometimes would appear on the Internet before the Tour posted them. ``We believe the scores are in the public domain when they occur,'' Morris attorney George Gabel told the Augusta Chronicle, a Morris newspaper. ``The only reason the PGA Tour can keep the news media or anyone else from reporting the scores is because of a monopoly power.'' In 2002, U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger ruled that the scores are private property until published or broadcast by the Tour. ``The district court correctly found that a company even a monopolist company that expends time and money to create a valuable product does not violate the antitrust laws when it declines to provide that product to its competitors for free,'' Dubina wrote in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. Tour spokesman Bob Combs said the PGA was ``delighted'' with the ruling. Morris attorney Gabel did not immediately return telephone calls made by The Associated Press to his office in Jacksonville, Fla. However, Gabel told the Augusta Chronicle that Morris Communications was considering whether to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gabel had no comment as to how, if at all, the decision will affect the company's coverage of the Masters Tournament in Augusta next week.