In the United States v. Donruss Co., 1968, the Supreme Court dealt with an antitrust issue involving trading cards. The case was initiated by Topps Chewing Gum Inc., which had exclusive contracts with most major league baseball players to use their pictures on bubble gum cards. Donruss Co., a competitor of Topps, also wanted to produce and sell similar trading cards but could not due to these exclusive contracts. Consequently, they filed a lawsuit against Topps and Major League Baseball alleging that this exclusivity constituted restraint of trade in violation of federal antitrust laws (Sherman Act). However, the court ruled in favor of Topp's and MLB stating that such agreements did not violate anti-trust laws as long as they were limited in scope and duration.

In the dissenting opinion for United States v. Donruss Co., it was argued that the majority's decision to uphold a lower court ruling prohibiting trading card company Donruss from using player names and statistics without permission, effectively granted Major League Baseball an exclusive right over public domain information. The dissent contended that this violated principles of free speech and competition as well as misinterpreted copyright law. They believed that facts such as player names and statistics are not subject to copyright protection because they do not represent original creative expression but rather constitute publicly accessible information. Furthermore, they asserted that granting MLB exclusive control over these facts would stifle competition in the sports memorabilia market by preventing other companies from producing baseball cards or similar products featuring current players.