March Madness: Trade Secrets Claims Block Billion Dollar Bracket

For those of us who revel in this time of year as amateur "bracketologists," last year's promise of the billion dollar bracket brought an added lottery-like level of fun to the NCAA basketball tournament.  Even though the odds of winning were (as stated by the rules) 1 in 9 quintillion, people believed that there COULD be that one winning bracket – that is, until Memphis beat George Washington University and everyone's perfect bracket hopes died.

This year, however, it was action in the courtroom—not the basketball court—that dashed the hopes of would-be billion dollar bracket makers.  In a lawsuit filed last March, SCA Promotions, a Texas based company that insures these types of contests, claims that Yahoo had agreed that, in exchange for SCA paying the $1 billion prize in the highly unlikely chance that someone picked the perfect bracket, Yahoo would pay SCA $11 million for incurring that risk.  After Yahoo cancelled the contract on January 27, 2014, it failed to