March Madness v. Netfire

Citation: March Madness Athletic Ass’n v. Netfire Inc., 120 Fed. Appx. 540 (5th Cir. 2005).

The NCAA and the Illinois High School Association have successfully defended the victory they won in a federal trial court in a trademark and cybersquatting lawsuit against Netfire Inc., the one-time operator of the website “marchmadness.com.” The two athletic associations own a company called the “March Madness Athletic Association,” which in turn owns the “March Madness” trademark.

In a Per Curiam opinion marked “is not precedent,” the Court of Appeals has held &mdash; in technical language that tracks the standard of review in cases like this &mdash; that it found “no clear error” in the trial court’s conclusion that Netfire had infringed the “March Madness” trademark. It also found “no clear error” in the trial court’s conclusion that Netfire’s use of marchmadness.com was likely to cause confusion.

The appeals court also found “no error” in the trial court’s conclusion that Netfire had violated the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), because the “marchmadness.com” domain name is identical or confusingly similar to the “March Madness” trademark, and because Netfire used the domain name “with the bad faith intent to profit” from it.

Netfire didn’t do as badly as it might have, though. The trial court refused to award the March Madness Athletic Association any damages. And the appeals court affirmed that ruling too. The appeals court held that the ACPA does not make damages available for domain registrations or use that occurred before the Act became law in 1999, by which time Netfire was no longer using marchmadness.com.

The appeals court also affirmed the trial court’s decision not to award attorneys’ fees to the March Madness Athletic Association.