For a full explanation of the following emails, see ‘FootyTweets’ use of fixtures info breached copyright, says firm representing UK professional football leagues,’ on the Journalism.co.uk main site, which reports how the sport fansite FootyTweets and its Twitter feed will no longer use club logos or include live match updates, after receiving a cease and desist letter on behalf of the company which handles match report licences for the four professional UK football leagues.

Here are the emails from NetResult, on behalf of Football DataCo, sent to FootyTweets’ Ollie Parsley, asking him to change the way he used information and images for his site and Twitter feed:

Dear Sirs,

DataCo_NBCAD_25050

We write on behalf of the Football Data Co Limited which is the appointed licensee of the FA Premier League, the Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League (“the Leagues”) in respect of the licensing of certain intellectual property rights of the Leagues, including UK Club Crests, for use by third parties. We have noticed that your website http://footytweets.com/ is displaying UK Club Crests without permission.

We wish to make you aware that we have a good faith belief that your present use is an infringement of the Leagues’ legal rights and that all such unauthorised use must cease immediately. Please confirm by return your agreement to this and give your undertaking to cease all such infringements on any and all of your web sites. Pending your response the Leagues’ rights are fully reserved. We thank you for your cooperation.

Yours sincerely,
Philip Stubbs
NetResult A Division of Projector NetResult Ltd Broadway House,
2-6 Fulham Broadway,
London,
SW6 1AA

Another email:

Hi Ollie,

Thanks for your reply. You can find our website at the following address

http://www.nr-online.com/
http://www.nr-online.com/clients.php

and we are also mentioned on the football dataco website at the following addresses (Football dataco license live data, fixtures and work on behalf of the UK leagues to protect their rights, NetResult helps protect these rights)

What We Do

http://www.football-dataco.com/partners.htm

I did send formal cease and desist emails to the addresses supplied on your footytweet site and the address in your DNS lookup, i can reforward these on to you tomorrow if you wish.

The logo and league crest content covers all UK domestic leagues. In order to use these you will need to contact the League and each club in question and ask for their permission to use the logos. All content will need to be removed until permission is granted.

Your site was actually bought to our attention by several clubs who are not happy their rights are being used unorthorised and have asked us to contact you to get this content removed.

Also, if you had planned to update scores during matches or add fixtures to your tweets you will need to purchase a license from Football DataCo that allows you to use this content.

If you have any further questions please do ask.

Kind Regards

Philip Stubbs