The decision on which Fox or CBS Sunday afternoon NFL games go to which local affiliates is a complicated process, and one that has some changes from week to week (necessitating sites like JP Kirby’s 506 Sports that post the weekly maps). It’s understandable that there’s some technology and analytics involved in that. And that’s now led to a patent infringement lawsuit, with Recentive Analytics suing Fox in a Delaware court last week, claiming that Fox’s in-house tool infringes on their patents. Here’s more from Michael McCann and Jacob Feldman in a piece published at Sportico Tuesday:
On Nov. 29, Recentive Analytics sued Fox in a Delaware federal court, arguing the network “directly infringes” Recentive’s patents by deploying a mapping tool that “creates a schedule of events for content that occurs at discrete time slots (e.g., NFL Sunday games at 1 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. ET) for a plurality of cities.”
Based in Massachusetts, Recentive offers analytics platforms to TV networks, leagues, teams and live entertainment companies, which use those platforms to make predictions and adjust resources. The NFL, for instance, has spent years getting smarter about which games it airs in which markets, and it has credited Recentive’s technology with helping it do so. Several teams and schools use another Recentive platform to predict demand for season tickets. Earlier this year, Recentive entered a joint partnership with Elevate Sports Ventures to expand its footprint.
Fox, Recentive claims, became “aware of and had access to” Recentive’s “predictive analytics platform for regional scheduling of NFL football games for multiple seasons, including specifically the 2022–2023 season” by “at least 2018.” Recentive and Fox had separate partnerships with the NFL during this time. Recentive contends that rather than use Recentive’s network maps to schedule regional broadcasts of NFL games, Fox used “infringing predictive analytics software to optimize scheduling and broadcasts.” Recentive says that Fox relies on a VP of data products and ML strategy to develop and oversee a “Fox Mapping Tool,” which Recentive describes as “map[ping] the first plurality of events and the second plurality of events to a plurality of television stations for a plurality of cities.”
As that piece notes, these local market decisions have long been a part of NFL coverage, and they did not originate with Recentive. And neither did the idea of maps. But Recentive’s argument is that their specific approach and technology innovated on what previously was available, and that rather than strike a deal to use theirs, Fox created an in-house tool that used too much of Recentive’s patents.
Patent law cases are challenging. And a lot of what happens there can often depend on not only similarity of the end product, but on proving a way in which the end product was derived from another company’s product . So, if this does go to trial, it will be interesting to see just what evidence Recentive has to support these claims, none of which have yet been proven in court. (And this case may not get that far; there’s always the chance of a dismissal or a settlement). But it’s certainly notable that Recentive has filed this lawsuit. And it’s going to lead to some legal fees for both them and Fox.
[Sportico; Recentive logo at left above from Recentive on Twitter, NFL on Fox logo from Fox Sports Press Pass]
