Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Am. Needle, Inc. v. New Orleans, Louisiana Saints, No. 04 C 7806, 2007 WL 4766815 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 19, 2007) (Moran, Sen. J.).

Judge Moran dismissed plaintiff’s remaining antitrust monopolization claim against various NFL entities and the 32 NFL teams.* Despite the fact that the NFL teams were a single entity for licensing purposes,** the NFL team could still be liable for monopolization outside of coordinated licensing efforts . But the alleged monopolization – licensing of defendants’ trademarks – can be done at defendants’ whim without violating antitrust laws based on the NFL’s status as a single entity.

*  Congrats to the New York Giants and Michigan Man Amani Toomer on a great Super Bowl victory.

** Click here for the post on that opinion in the Blog’s archives.

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Am. Needle, Inc. v. New Orleans Louisiana Saints, __ F. Supp.2d __, 2007 WL 2042764 (N.D. Ill. Jul. 11, 2007) (Moran, J.).

Judge Moran granted defendants, the NFL, NFL Properties and each of the thirty two teams (collectively the “NFL”) as well as Reebok International, Ltd. (“Reebok”), summary judgment on plaintiff’s Sherman Act antitrust claims, finding that the NFL acts through NFL Properties as a single entity for IP licensing purposes. For more than twenty years, NFL Properties licensed plaintiff to use various trademarks on its headwear. Plaintiff filed this suit after NFL Properties entered an exclusive license with Reebok, ending plaintiff’s license rights. Plaintiff argued that the NFL teams collectively, as well as in concert with Reebok, violated the antitrust laws by acting together through NFL Properties to license their collective intellectual property rights exclusively to Reebok (plaintiff argued that the NFL did not violate antitrust laws when it licensed to numerous parties, including plaintiff, through NFL Properties). But the Court held that licensing coordination between the NFL and its teams was equivalent to coordination between a corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiary. Because the Supreme Court treats corporations and their wholly-owned subsidiaries as single entities, there could be no conspiracy and no antitrust violation.

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