Weber v. NFL

Citation: Weber v. National Football League, Inc., 112 F.Supp.2d 667 (N.D. Ohio 2000).

Factual Background
The plaintiff brought a Sherman Act §2 claim against two professional football teams, the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, who sought to prevent the plaintiff from registering the domain names “jets.com” and “dolphins.com.” The plaintiff alleged that the market “should be defined by the demand for the domain names ‘jets.com’ and ‘dolphins.com.’” Id.

Trial Court Proceedings
The trial court rejected the plaintiff’s claim that the relevant market for antitrust purposes should be circumscribed to the market for a particular name, holding instead that the market should be “defined very broadly, in terms of domain names in general.”