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AP: Court: NFL is 32 teams, not single business

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Court: NFL is 32 teams, not single business

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer – 57 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court rejected the National Football League's request for broad antitrust law protection Monday, saying that it must be considered 32 separate teams — not one big business — when selling branded items like jerseys and caps.

"Although NFL teams have common interests such as promoting the NFL brand, they are still separate, profit-maximizing entities, and their interests in licensing team trademarks are not necessarily aligned," said the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for an unanimous court.

The high court reversed a lower court ruling throwing out an antitrust suit brought against the league by one of its former hat makers, who was upset that it lost its contract for making official NFL hats to Reebok International Ltd.

American Needle, Inc. sued, claiming the league violated antitrust law because all 32 teams worked together to freeze it out of the NFL-licensed hatmaking business and gave Reebok an exclusive 10-year license.

The company lost and appealed to the Supreme Court but the NFL did as well, hoping to get broader protection from antitrust lawsuits

Major League Baseball is the only professional sports league with broad antitrust protection. The National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, the NCAA, NASCAR, professional tennis and Major League Soccer supported the NFL in this case, hoping the high court would expand broad antitrust exemption to other sports.

But Stevens said NFL teams directly compete on many levels. Citing the two teams in this year's Super Bowl, the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, Stevens said that teams compete against each other "to attract fans, for gate receipts and for contracts with managerial and playing personnel."

"Directly relevant to this case, the teams compete in the market for intellectual property," Stevens said. "To a firm making hats, the Saints and the Colts are two potentially competing suppliers of valuable trademarks."

American Needle was one of many companies that made NFL headgear until the league awarded an exclusive contract to Reebok. Lower courts threw out American Needle's lawsuit, holding that nothing in antitrust law prohibits NFL teams from cooperating on apparel licensing so the league can compete against other forms of entertainment.

But the high court turned away that theory and sent American Needle's antitrust lawsuit back to the lower court.

"Decisions by NFL teams to license their separately owned trademarks collectively and to only one vendor are decisions that 'deprive the marketplace of independent centers of decisionmaking ... and therefore of actual or potential competition,' " Stevens said.

Just because NFL teams have a single organization, the National Football League Properties, to jointly develop, license and market its logos does not mean it can escape antitrust scrutiny, Stevens said.

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