A number of baseball podcasts disappeared from iTunes after complaints from Major League Baseball about trademark infringement, Craig Calcaterra reports for NBC Sports. MLB says it notified Apple about “infringing uses of trademarks of Major League Baseball and certain Clubs” and “asked Apple to have these trademarks removed from the podcast titles and thumbnails.”
A bunch of podcasts vanished after that, Joe Lucia reports for Awful Announcing. Ted Price, who hosts a Texas Rangers podcast, tells Lucia iTunes accounts for almost all his downloads.
An MLB spokesperson told Calcaterra it didn’t ask for the podcasts to get 86’d: “Given our many years of experience in notifying Apple about trademark issues on the Store, we trust that removing the podcasts was an oversight, and ask that you please look into this matter as soon as possible.”
At least one professional sports team has zealously protected its trademarks when it comes to media coverage. The Washington Redskins in 2011 forced The Washington Post to change the name of its blog about the team from Redskins Insider to Football Insider. The Redskins also asked a blog called Redskins Republic to change its name; it’s now Hail Republic. (An increasing number of outlets have stopped printing the Redskins’ name for a different reason.)
