City of Pasadena hits back at Tournament of Roses in court

It’s no secret: Pasadena hasn’t been thrilled with the Tournament of Roses Association, not since the Tournament sued the city over the naming rights to the Rose Bowl Game. Ahead of a meeting with a federal judge, Pasadena’s lawyers are fighting back.

In the city’s first legal filings submitted this week — responding to allegations of trademark infringement and breach of contract, among others — Pasadena accused the Tournament of secretly coordinating to move the 2021 Rose Bowl Game to Texas, then turning to the courts to gain the legal leverage to move the game again without consulting the city.

The city argues that the dispute isn’t about trademark violations at all; both parties know exactly who owns what.

At its core, the Tournament’s suit is about a contract dispute, the city says — one that was solved on Dec. 29 when the city and Tournament signed a $2 million deal to officially move the Rose Bowl Game and avoid litigation.

The Tournament’s suit is an “invitation to redraft the parties’ contracts for future, hypothetical events that might never happen,” the filings say, calling on the

courts to dismiss the case entirely.

In the Tournament’s lawsuit, it said the city falsely claimed ownership of the Rose Bowl Game trademark and sought to confuse the marketplace — including Tournament partners, such as the College Football Playoff Committee and ESPN — as to who owns the rights to the Rose Bowl Game.

That impacted the Tournament’s ability to do business, its lawyers alleged, threatening the future of the Rose Bowl Game itself, not to mentions millions of dollars in revenue.

The Tournament told the courts it needed to move the game because of worsening coronavirus conditions in Pasadena.

The city countered, saying the pandemic was just a pretext for a move away from Pasadena.

The city alleges, during a meeting with Tournament lawyers on Dec. 21, the Tournament said it had been talking with the Committee “for the last couple of months” about moving the game out of Pasadena.

The Tournament, “however, kept that information from the city until the final decision was made on Dec. 19 — just 13 days before the game was to be played and after game-day planning had been underway for months,” the filings say.

The city argued that the real reason for the move was to “sell thousands of tickets” — 18,353 to be precise — after city and state officials rejected their requests to have about 1,800 fans in the Rose Bowl Stadium — just players’ families and friends.

So, the city says, the Tournament and College

Football Playoff Committee conspired to move the game to Texas where “if anything, the crisis was far more dangerous there than in Pasadena” — though government restrictions were much looser — saying the Tournament “participated in a potential super-spreader event.”

For the city, much of the controversy centers around the contract’s force majeure clause, which defines what the Tournament can do with the game when there’s an event outside of everyone’s control that forces them to cancel.

Pasadena says the Tournament could have held the game at the Rose Bowl Stadium because they had held several UCLA games without any fans and they planned to do the same with the Rose Bowl Game.

Because the game could’ve been played, the city argues that the conditions for a force majeure event weren’t met. And even if they were, the city argues, the contract stipulates the date of the game should be moved, not the location. For the game to be called ‘The Rose Bowl Game,’ it must be played in Pasadena, the city says, referencing a longstanding contract between the Tournament and Pasadena.

When it came to the trademark dispute, Pasadena says there is no disagreement: it never contested or questioned the Tournament’s ownership of the name, “The Rose Bowl Game.”

This lawsuit was filed to convince the courts to give the Tournament “unilateral discretion” to move the game to another venue in the case of another force majeure event, whatever that event may be, the city’s argument says.

Pasadena’s response directly addresses each of the Tournament’s trademark

allegations, including the city’s use of the #RoseBowl hashtag on Instagram — fair use, the city says, and not a source of confusion as to who owns the game’s naming rights.

It also turned to a New York Times article, which said the city shared a trademark with the Tournament of Roses on the game’s name.

Mayor Victor Gordo, who was quoted in the story, never said the city shares a trademark with the Tournament, the filings contend, and the city has never taken that position.

The only statement attributed to Mayor Gordo in that story is, “The football game belongs to the city of Pasadena and the people of Pasadena.”

The city argued that “editorial statement is not a trademark use. It simply reflects the civic pride that the nearly 100-year-old annual New Year’s Day football game held in the city’s Rose Bowl Stadium is synonymous with Pasadena and its residents.”

Both the city and Tournament are slated to meet with a judge in early June, according to the federal court docket.

Even as the dispute boils under the surface, the show must go on: The Tournament sent out a news release March 3, one day after Pasadena’s court filing, saying it was planning to host the Rose Bowl Game and the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, 2022.

“We look forward to working with the City of Pasadena and our other valued partners throughout the year as we prepare for the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena on January 1, 2022,” Bob Miller, President of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, said in the release.