A name-brand manufacturer of golf balls was involved in trademark litigation with a company that recovered used balls from golf courses, restored them and marketed them, claiming that they were “as good as brand-new name-brand balls”. We designed an experiment that would compare the performance of new and refurbished balls, while controlling for sources of variability in performance, such as player ability, wind, temperature, and humidity. A statistical analysis of the experiments showed that the new balls performed better than the refurbished balls and these results were presented in deposition. Additionally, we re-analyzed data gathered by the opposition which also showed the superiority of the new balls (contrary to the opposition’s claims).
