If you can have someone sue you and then pay you $20,000, why not try it again?
It remains to be seen whether the trustees of Purdue University will be as soft a touch as Joplin city officials were, but their lawsuit, filed in January in U. S. District Court in Indiana, features many similarities to the problems Joplin ran into with Reinke and the Mother Road Marathon.
In this case, it was the Home of Purdue Half Marathon in Lafayette and West Lafayette.
According to the lawsuit, Reinke Sports Group "e-mailed race participants" on July 29, 2010, and acted as if officials from the university and both cities were full partners in the race. Even after being asked to discontinue the promotion, according to the lawsuit, Reinke "continued to advertise as if it was supported by the university."
University officials are asking for an injunction barring Reinke from using the university's name. They are also asking for damages.
The city of Joplin's lawsuit, which officially concluded Friday, began after the city had problems with Reinke's organization of the inaugural Mother Road Marathon. Even after letting Reinke know the city did not intend to have his group operate the race, Reinke kept advertising and seeking participants for the second Mother Road Marathon.
City Attorney Brian Head explained the city's rationale for paying Reinke in the December 28 Joplin Globe:
‘Ultimately, we believe it is in the city’s best interest to conclude the case quickly,” Joplin City Attorney Brian Head said today.”We can go ahead and put together the 2011 race without any litigation looming over the event.”
This is a very different kind of case, which you would have realized had you spend 5 minutes of quality time with a search engine.
ReplyDeletePurdue never had a relationship with Reinke and doesn't care about running a 2nd marathon in short order. All they want to do is protect their trademarked name; Reinke seems to have serious problems respecting the intellectual property of others.
So Purdue has all the time in the world and plenty of money to protect their name, Joplin has neither.