THE Bendigo Spirit’s fight to keep its name exclusively has fallen on deaf ears after the Sydney Spirit were yesterday given the green light to use the name.Basketball Australia chief executive officer Scott Derwin released a statement yesterday afternoon on behalf of the interim board of Basketball which had investigated the controversy surrounding Sydney’s use of the Spirit name.‘‘While the Board was sympathetic to Bendigo’s objection, given it had not been made aware of Sydney’s application to use the Spirit name, it has rejected Bendigo’s contention that it would have a negative impact on the team’s brand commercially,’’ the statement said.‘‘Bendigo Spirit has cited in its objections the case with the Wildcats as a precedent set by the WNBL, which rejected a name proposed by Christchurch based on the grounds that an NBL team in Perth was operating under the same Wildcats name. It is important to understand that this was in fact based on a legal decision, as the Perth Wildcats had trademarked its name.‘‘As Bendigo had not registered Spirit as its intellectual property, it has been found that Sydney went through the correct process and received the requisite approvals and initiated the change in its team name in good faith.‘‘It clearly would have been unreasonable to expect Sydney to change its name again.’‘ It is not unusual for sporting teams in different leagues to share names, therefore it was the board’s opinion that the two teams could co-exist without requiring Sydney to change its team name.‘‘The board is satisfied that, given the two teams are based in completely different regions of Australia and with both playing in distinctly different leagues, there is little chance the two sides would be confused.’’ Bendigo Spirit general manager Wendy James was outraged by the decision.‘‘We’ve been treated very poorly in this saga,’’ James said.‘‘We just don’t mean anything to these people and Sydney does.‘‘All of Bendigo should be very annoyed by this decision.’’ The Bendigo Spirit board will meet this morning to decide its next move, but legal action appears unlikely.