Court upholds rights in options indexes
19 July 2010
Eileen McDermott, New York
An Illinois court has ruled that two US options exchanges cannot offer options listings on indexes to which the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) holds an exclusive licence
CBOE, Dow Jones & Company and The McGraw-Hill Companies sued the International Securities Exchange (ISE) and the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) in 2006.
They alleged that ISE and OCC were attempting to misappropriate their IP rights in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and S&P Composite Stock Price Index (S&P 500) by proposing to offer and clear options based on the DJIA and the S&P 500 without a licence.
CBOE, Dow and McGraw calculate the settlement index level for options based on their respective indexes, weighted according to their own methodologies. They then publish those values daily on financial websites. ISE was seeking the court's approval to do this independently, without a licence.
ISE and OCC had argued in part that the claims were pre-empted by the Copyright Act and should be tried in federal court, rather than the Cook County circuit court. But Judge...
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