March Madness Case Study

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Parties
March Madness Athletic Association, L.L.C.
Defendants
Netfire, Inc. and Sports Marketing International Inc.
Statement of Issues
The case involves a trademark issue between March Madness Athletic Association(MMAA) and Netfire, Inc. and Sports Marketing International Inc. (SMI). MMAA brought suit to SMI and Netfire for cybersquatting, false representation, trademark infringement, and unfair competition under the Lanham Act and state law, as well as civil conspiracy under state law, for their use of the term "march madness" in a domain name(http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?).
Arguments of the Plaintiff
In 1982 during the NCAA Tournament Brent Musbereger the broadcaster for CBS used the phrase March Madness …show more content…

This meeting occurred between late December 1995 and early January 1996. Dirk Brinkerhoff’s company SMI was trying to start a website strictly for the NCAA Basketball Tournament and Matthew Jones mentioned to Dirk that the website name was available for use. Mr. Jones was a very experience individual in attaining websites and had done it hundreds of times for other clients. The problem this time is that Mr. Jones forgot to do an inquire on the website; which if he did, he would had run into an issue that the website had already been registered or trademark by someone else. Mr. Jones had never done an extended inquire on a website before for any of his …show more content…

and Sports Marketing International Inc. (SMI) had engage in trademark infringement and cybersquatting. They were to stop using the phrase March Madness and to be held liable for the cost of action.
Rationale
While reviewing the case, the courts determined that the phrase “march madness” is a protected trademark and not just a common name.
The March Madness phrase is part of the NCAA Basketball Tournament to describe the Tournament during the month of March. This name is a very unique name not as such names 'Spring Championship,' or 'Basketball League Finals,' etc. There are other tournaments that coexist such as the National Invitational Tournament (the "NIT") during the month of March.
The phrase “March Madness” has become the second name for the NCCA Basketball Tournament. Individuals from all ages can relate to the phrase “March Madness” and they look forward to the tournament in March. Participants took a survey and the outcome would become, so confusing for the public in having the trademark by the NCCA and the website by

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