A Dick’s Sporting Goods subsidiary is suing the company that operates the popular Baseball Reference website, alleging trademark infringement.

GameChanger, which is owned by Dick’s, is a software application for youth baseball and softball. The app provides statistics tracking, as well as the ability to live stream games.

According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, the defendant’s website, Baseball Reference, created a baseball-viewing app in August called “Game Changer.”

The lawsuit alleges that Baseball Reference’s app is likely to create “consumer confusion” between the two programs.

Sports Reference, its parent company, is based in Philadelphia. Baseball Reference provides statistics on players and teams in both Major League Baseball and at the college level.

A message left with Sports Reference was not immediately returned.

GameChanger, which has employees in Coraopolis where Dick’s is headquartered, was obtained by the company in 2016.

The app, according to the complaint, provides scorekeeping tools, advanced stats and the ability to provide play-by-play streaming video so people who can’t attend the games can watch online.

Since GameChanger’s release in 2010, the lawsuit said, it has been downloaded several million times and has an average of 3 million users per year — including more than 400,000 youth baseball and softball teams.

The GameChanger app, the complaint said, has garnered more than $90 million in revenue and has more than 600,000 reviews on the Apple app store.

Because of its popularity and extensive marketing, the lawsuit said, the GameChanger trademark has “achieved such widespread public exposure and recognition that it is highly distinctive and well-known among consumers in the United States, as well as among consumers in Pennsylvania.”

However, according to the lawsuit, Baseball Reference’s Game Changer app on its website is in the beta testing phase.

It “purports to allow users to ‘customize how [they] view baseball, by prioritizing the content that [they] want to watch,’ ” the lawsuit said.

On Sept. 18, the lawsuit said, attorneys for GameChanger sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sports Reference to immediately stop the use of the Game Changer name.

“Because the Infringing Game Changer App is still in the beta testing phase, plaintiff believed it would not be burdensome for defendant to choose a new name,” the complaint said.

Eleven days later, however, the defendant’s attorney responded that the company would not discontinue the use of the name.

Michael Madison, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in trademark law, called it a “garden variety trademark conflict.”

“Game changer sounds rather ordinary — even in a sports context,” he said. “But if the phrase has been used in a way to distinguish Dick’s service from others, there’s a plausible trademark.”

GameChanger applied for the trademark in April 2009, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It was registered in June 2010.

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