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Rigorous intellectual property rights enforcement is a key to maintaining the value of sports brands and content. Sports leagues, owners, broadcasters, and sponsors invest billions in team and league brands, and in the coverage of sporting events. Piracy -- an increasing challenge in the digital age -- is a clear and present danger to that investment.
Over the past two decades, Covington lawyers have compiled a remarkable track record in combatting the infringement of sports league copyrights and trademarks and the piracy of sports telecasts both domestically and internationally. The firm has represented the NBA and the NFL in obtaining injunctions against the unauthorized cross-border retransmission of sports programming via the internet and by satellite. The firm is also undefeated in representing the NFL in federal courts throughout the United States in actions against hundreds of commercial establishments illegally intercepting NFL game telecasts for commercial (as opposed to private or home) use.
On the trademark front, Covington has gone to court to help the NBA shut down dealers of counterfeit NBA merchandise during All-Star Game weekend. And Covington recently secured for the NFL a precedent-setting ruling in an antitrust challenge to the collective licensing of League and Club marks and logos for use on apparel; a federal court in Chicago held that, in licensing their intellectual property, the NFL and its members operate as a “single entity” effectively immune from liability under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In short, Covington lawyers know how important intellectual property rights are to sports leagues, and we know how to protect and enforce those rights aggressively in both the US and overseas.
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