{"id":10983,"date":"2010-07-21T10:49:41","date_gmt":"2010-07-21T15:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=10983"},"modified":"2010-07-21T10:49:41","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T15:49:41","slug":"should-the-teams-of-the-nfl-be-treated-as-a-single-entity-under-the-sherman-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/07\/should-the-teams-of-the-nfl-be-treated-as-a-single-entity-under-the-sherman-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Should the Teams of the NFL Be Treated as a Single Entity Under the Sherman Act?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits concerted actions unreasonably restraining trade, but exempts collective actions by separate business entities who share a complete unity of interest.\u00a0 Whether \u00a7 1 applies to the major professional sports leagues\u00a0has long been a matter of debate.\u00a0 On the one hand, each team is separately owned and seeks to maximize its own profits.\u00a0 On the other hand, each team has an important shared interest in maintaining a full league of competitive teams — who will pay to see the Yankees if they effortlessly crush all opponents?\u00a0 So, does a league potentially\u00a0violate \u00a7 1 when it blocks its members from entering into individual merchandising or broadcasting deals?<\/p>\n

Matt Mitten <\/a>reviews the history of litigation addressing this\u00a0issue in a new paper on SSRN<\/a>.\u00a0 His analysis concludes with a discussion of the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement on the question, American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League<\/em>, 130 S. Ct. 2201 (2010).\u00a0 In American Needle<\/em>, the Court held that the NFL’s grant of an exclusive trademark license to a headwear manufacturer was not immune from \u00a7 1 scrutiny.\u00a0 The Court wrote, “Common interests in the NFL brand partially<\/em> unite the economic interests of the parent firms, but the teams still have distinct, potentially competing interests.”\u00a0 Although the question is a difficult one, Matt argues that Court reached the right result.\u00a0 The paper is entitled “American Needle v. NFL<\/em>: U.S. Professional Clubs are Separate Economic Threads When Jointly Marketing Intellectual Property.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits concerted actions unreasonably restraining trade, but exempts collective actions by separate business entities who share a complete unity of interest.\u00a0 Whether \u00a7 1 applies to the major professional sports leagues\u00a0has long been a matter of debate.\u00a0 On the one hand, each team is separately owned and seeks to 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