Sports Marketing: NFL Sues Over Planned Restaurants

Don't make reservations just yet at the NFL Players Grill, plans for which were just unveiled by Millennium Entertainment and the NFL Players Association. The NFL last week filed suit to challenge the use of the "NFL" name by Millennium and Commonwealth Associates, a New York investment bank seeking funding for what it hopes will be a 12-restaurant chain.
The league has never begrudged the union use of "NFL" as part of its name, but the restaurant is the most conspicuous attempt by the union yet to use the trademark for commercial purposes, outside of joint licensing efforts, like trading cards and videos, from which both the league and the union derive licensing revenue. But with the NFL Players Grill, NFLPA marketing arm Players Inc. and its partners may have overstepped. The NFL has been quietly shopping its own restaurant entertainment concept for more than a year.
According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, a prospectus distributed by Commonwealth included such claims as "Millennium is the first and only restaurant company licensed to incorporate the NFL into a theme restaurant" and "league events and promotions are to be scheduled" at these restaurants, both dubious claims, since the enterprise was founded under a license from NFLPA. In their haste to find backers, the would-be NFL restaurateurs apparently got overzealous, soliciting, among others, NFL owners for start-up funding, sources said.
In the suit, the NFL seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent Millennium from continued "trademark infringement." The complaint was filed the same day Millennium held a pr event in Orlando to publicize its plans.