Federal Appeals Court cleared the way for NASCAR to prevent AT&T Inc. from featuring its logo
A ruling by a federal appeals court cleared the way for NASCAR to prevent AT&T Inc. from featuring its logo on Jeff Burton’s No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its order that San Antonio based AT&T lacks standing to challenge NASCAR’s decision, a significant blow to AT&T and Cingular.
The court threw out a lower court’s ruling that prevented NASCAR from stopping AT&T’s plans. The appeals court remanded the case to the U.S. District Court in Atlanta for dismissal. At issue is AT&T’s desire to change the Cingular logo on Burton’s car to the AT&T logo based on the recent purchase of AT&T by Cingular, where Cingular retained the AT&T brand name.
AT&T bought Atlanta based BellSouth Corp. last year, gaining full control of Cingular and has since rebranded the cell phone provider under the AT&T name. NASCAR has tried to prevent the Cingular logo from being changed to the AT&T logo on Burton’s car because AT&T rival Sprint Nextel Corp. sponsors NASCAR’s premier series, the Nextel Cup, and has exclusive rights as the telecommunications company for the series.
This became a clear conflict in Nextel’s mind which prompted the action on their part. Attorneys for NASCAR and Sprint Nextel have argued the only exceptions are companies, including Cingular, that already sponsored cars when Nextel reached its agreement with NASCAR.
Cingular’s parent has argued that its rights included changing its brand name to AT&T. Clearly the court did not agree with this perspective and furthermore contented that such a claim was not specified in the sponsorship terms and conditions of the sited law.
The case, which includes a $100 million countersuit by NASCAR against AT&T, is scheduled to go to trial. The results of which is had to determine based on the ruling in this case.
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