Jeff Burton Races Under The AT&T Brand

Awesome news out of Atlanta…

NASCAR can't stop AT&T Inc. from featuring its logo on Jeff Burton's No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, a federal judge ruled Friday. NASCAR asked for the ruling to be put on hold pending appeal.

U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob in Atlanta issued a preliminary injunction barring NASCAR and any entity affiliated with it from interfering with AT&T's rights as primary sponsor of the car in NASCAR Cup Series races.

NASCAR has tried to prevent the Cingular logo from being changed to the AT&T logo on Burton's car. AT&T is the sole owner of Cingular and is rebranding the cell phone company's name to AT&T.

It's about time. I hadn't heard about this before tonight's All-Star event, and I was shocked when I saw the new logo.

In his ruling regarding Burton's car, Shoob said, "The court concludes that the continued appearance of the Cingular brand on the No. 31 car, unaccompanied by any indication that Cingular now does business as AT&T, is likely to confuse NASCAR fans."

Shoob also concluded that AT&T has shown it will suffer irreparable harm in the form of loss of goodwill and loss of exclusive rights to renew its sponsorship agreement unless the court issues the injunction.

NASCAR had argued that AT&T would be welcome to sponsor a car in NASCAR's Busch series or truck racing, but that Nextel was entitled to exclusivity through its 10-year, $700 million investment that began in 2004. It also said it could be sued by Sprint Nextel if the court granted the injunction in favor of AT&T.

I agree, Sprint Nextel is entitled to exclusivity through its 10-year investment. Problem is, Cingular was one of the exceptions to that contract. While the name might be different, it's still the same company, so what's the big deal?

I think I know what it is. Sprint Nextel is worried about the brand "AT&T". If, after the merger, they had chosen to go with the Bellsouth name, I don't think we'd be hearing about any of this right now.