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Originally Posted by FleetWalker
I would think anyone making NCAA leagues should have concerns, and those concerns may extend beyond just NCAA-based leagues. The NCAA has bigger pockets even than league at issue here, and they have sued video game companies on similar issues in the past.
By doing what it did, the company has basically admitted that it believes it is liable (or at least potentially liable) for trademark and licenses violations even when it is only end users using the game engine to create leagues that use those marks. By showing that the company can take (effective?) action against users who are using those marks, the company may have establish that it IS liable if it allows other such violations to happen with its game engine.
The only real difference is that the league in question initially came with the game (which wasn't a great business decision in retrospect) whereas all aspects of an NCAA league would be homebrewed. But I'd still be concerned. This could implicate a lot of fictional leagues that simply use NCAA team names like the Manhattan Jaspers. And it might extend just to the nicknames even, because, for example, Blue Devils is so closely associated with Duke that it may simply not be allowed for any team.
There is a user recreating the European football leagues as a baseball universe. Some of those leagues have the biggest pockets there are in the sports world. What about people using NBA or NFL marks for team names?
This is a big can of worms that was opened, and I think anyone homebrewing really needs to consider using older versions of the software or a moving on to something else honestly, because there is obviously no telling when this might happen again or to what it might extend.
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I think I read that it's legally covered because it's just database information, but I've wondered about the historical players considering the lawsuit that sank the NCAA Football series over name and likeness.
A lot of this requires someone to care enough to try to sue though, which I'd imagine most players either don't care/know or think it's cool they're in a game. With other smaller leagues too, it's probably not worth the fight or they're happy with the added exposure. How many American fans only know Honkbal Hoofdklasse is a thing because it is in OOTP? Granted, Japan's contributions to the sport are far more prevalent than a lot of nations and its absence is going to be far more noticeable than if Honkbal got axed.