Broadcasts and Promotions Related
to the 2011 NCAA Basketball Championships
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The NCAA national men’s basketball
tournament will begin on March 15, 2011, and end with the men’s final on
April 4 in Houston, Texas. The women’s tournament will begin on
March 19 and end with the women’s final on April 5 in Indianapolis,
Indiana. Due to the popularity of
the NCAA basketball championships, your station may be involved in promotions
tied to these tournaments. Although these promotional events are often
very successful, especially if local teams advance, they can, however, lead
to expensive litigation and damage awards if the NCAA’s intellectual property
rights are not respected by your station. Use
of NCAA Trademarks The NCAA extensively
licenses its trademarks, logos, designs, and other protected terminology for
substantial fees. Only licensed parties are authorized to use this
intellectual property. The NCAA vigorously protects its intellectual
property rights and does not hesitate to take legal action to enjoin
violations of those rights. Activities that create the appearance of a
relationship between the NCAA and its tournaments and your station or your
advertisers (known as “ambush marketing”) are therefore extremely
risky. Any unlicensed use of NCAA intellectual property for the
sale or promotion of any product or service is unlawful and can expose your station
to charges of trademark infringement, unfair competition, false advertising,
and/or misappropriation of good will, for which you can be held liable for
significant monetary damages. Note that the use of a disclaimer, such
as “not an official sponsor of the NCAA Tournament,” provides little, if any,
protection from such claims. Accordingly, we strongly recommend against
any use of the NCAA’s intellectual property in any station promotion (as
opposed to news reporting, as discussed below) unless explicitly
authorized to do so by the NCAA or its authorized agents. For example, unless
specifically licensed, you may not say or use in print the following in
connection with station promotional events: ·
“NCAA” ·
“Final Four,” “Sweet
Sixteen,” “Elite Eight,” etc. ·
Any team name or
nickname (such as “Tar Heels” or “Heels”) ·
Any NCAA or team
logo You may, however, say or use in print: ·
“The college
basketball championships” ·
“The national
semifinals of the college basketball championship” ·
The dates of the
games ·
The names of the
colleges that are competing, but not the team names ·
You may also make
fun of the fact that you cannot say the phrase “Final Four” (such as by
bleeping it out) For your reference, a
representative list of NCAA marks is included below. Contests
Involving Unauthorized Distribution of Event Tickets The NCAA and its authorized
agents are the only legal sources for the distribution of tournament
tickets. By purchasing tickets to the tournaments, the purchaser agrees
to all of the terms and conditions on the ticket request form and the printed
ticket, which generally prohibit the use of the ticket for advertising or
promotional purposes. Therefore, your station should NOT run any
promotion where tickets to a tournament game are awarded, even if your
station validly purchased the tickets. The only exception is if
your station conducts a promotion with an official sponsor that has written
permission from the NCAA to allow tickets to be given away in contests or
promotions; in such cases, be sure to confirm with the sponsor that it has
the required written authorization, and retain a copy of this authorization
for your files. News
Reporting on the Tournaments The NCAA also holds the
rights to all live accounts and descriptions of the tournament games and
events, and licenses these rights to television and radio stations.
Game tickets may include a written prohibition on giving accounts of the
games to the media. As a result, unless your station has obtained
appropriate press credentials, do not broadcast reports on an NCAA game from
the venue while the game is on-going. This includes not only live radio
and/or television reporting from the venue, but live blogging, as well.
Once a game has ended, you can report the “news” of the game, such as a
winner and the score. Your station must also
obtain prior consent from the NCAA or the local rights holder to use recorded
highlights of the games and pre- and post-game events that occurred inside
the venue in station newscasts and on station websites. Although the
First Amendment allows the media to report news on athletic events shortly
after the event, it does not protect a station that broadcasts footage or
sound clips of an event, the rights for which, in this case, are controlled
and licensed by the NCAA or the local rights holder. The
NCAA must grant approval before the use of any NCAA trademark or logo,
including the following list taken from the NCAA website:
If you
have any question about the nature or extent of the rights controlled by the NCAA
or any other aspect of this memo, please contact any attorney in our office. March 3, 2011 |
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This memorandum is intended only as a general discussion of these issues and should not be regarded as legal advice. We would be pleased to provide additional details or advice about specific situations if desired. Copyright © 2011, Lerman Senter PLLC 2000 K Street NW,
Suite 600 | Washington, DC 20006-1809 To Unsubscribe: Unsubscribe | To Update Client Info: Update Client Info |
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