The Associated Press is reporting that Yahoo! has settled the suit it brought at the beginning of June against the NFL Players Association over licensing fees for player stats.

According to the report, neither side is offering any details of the settlement. That’s a particular shame in this case, because it would be helpful to others in the fantasy sports industry to know what kind of concessions are being made by either side.

Is Yahoo! willing to go along with some level of licensing — perhaps an amount that would provide less cost than dragging out the legal process — for the sake of a business relationship that extends beyond fantasy? Is the NFLPA dropping its demands for payment because it realizes it won’t win this fight in the chosen forum? Perhaps we’ll find out at some later stage.

The last licensing agreement between Yahoo! and the NFLPA for player statistics ended on March 1, preceding the run up to this litigation. A previous suit on the same subject matter that produced a judgment in favor of CBS Interactive back in April remains active on appeal.

FSB.com will pass along any details of the Yahoo! settlement that do become public.

Tags: CBS v. NFLPA, fantasy football, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, yahoo v. nflpa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.