Wednesday Up First

Sheffield Wednesday visit Pride Park on the opening day of the 2012/13 season as the newly promoted Yorkshire side take on Derby County in their first league encounter. The eagerly awaited clashes with Nottingham Forest take place on Saturday 29th September and Saturday 19th January at the City Ground and Pride Park respectively.

The great fixture rip off continues!

If we wanted to publish fixtures on Vital Network Ltd it would cost us nearly £20 000 (with no commercial gain) or £200 ish per individual site + VAT.

These are OUR fixtures! The games that we readily advertise for our clubs who make much needed revenue from us giving free ticket information with no advertising costs.

And yet Dataco are still fighting the courts who have twice now ruled this charge not to be right.

See: www.bbc.co.uk

European Judges said: 'A football fixture list cannot be protected by copyright when its compilation is dictated by rules or constraints which leave no room for creative freedom."

The case was referred from the High Court in London to the European Court to "assess, in the light of the considerations set out by the [Luxembourg] court, whether the football fixture lists concerned are databases which satisfy the conditions of eligibility for copyright protection'.

The European judges added: 'However, the court adds that unless the procedures for creating the lists concerned as described by the national court are supplemented by elements reflecting originality in the selection or arrangement of the data contained in those lists, they do not suffice for those lists to be protected by the copyright laid down in the directive.'

However, the Premier League said there were elements of the case which indicated that football fixture lists were 'capable of database copyright protection'.

So the fight goes on.

So, for fixtures, go to the official site: dcfc.co.uk

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.