Intellectual Property Rights in Sports Management

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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1. Introduction
Popular sports like football, tennis, cricket, yachting, racing and so on have given rise
to so many important international events that has created in turn an immense fan following
around the globe. This has in turn created high marketing potential for organisers of the
sports events. Popular organisers and association pertaining to various sports like NBA, PGA,
FIFA, IPL and so on have developed a mannerism that is able to create as well as extract
highest value form other agencies who are likely most interested in exploitation of the
marketing potential from the high rated sports events.
Thesis statement: This essay aims at exploring the intellectual property rights that are
heavily in context with the sports and sports business management and ascertain the role
of the various instruments of the sports intellectual property rights.
2. Discussion
There are innumerable sports clubs which can turn out to be the perfect example of
intellectual properties brand capitalisation. Hence, it is very important that trademarks re
given prominence in order to safeguard the commercial interests of the company. The best
way to achieve that is registration of the trademark under the Trademarks Act, 1999 (Leyshon
et al. 2016). Any proprietor can register various categories of goods as well as services in
context of which the trademark is being used. An evidence can be provided here. The
franchise of the Adelaide Cricket Club, other than running a cricket team in the country is
also indulged in the selling of the t-shirts, caps as well as other equipment.
In case if any context of trademark infringement occurs, criminal as well as civil
remedies can be implemented under the Trademarking act of the respective country.
Next in importance is the Copyright Law under which the protection of the ideas is done.
This law allows the owner to copyright the other reproducing or selling the works created by

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the authentic users (Parr 2018). Specifically the materials that come under the protection of
the copyright are artwork that is there in the logos, literature in promotional works, computer
software as well as the online games that are being developed in the colours of the team that
is copyrighting the game. However, it is evident that in the current times, infringement as
well as piracy of the copyrighted materials are occurring more frequently. Hence it has
become all the more important for the owners of the copyright to police their portfolio of
copyright. The Copyright Act of 1957 can provide remedy against the copyright
infringements (Torti 2015). The likes of the remedies include injunction as well as
prohibition of the orders, claiming damages, seizure as well as destruction of the infringed
materials and so on.
Another instrument of protection are the patents. Patients are not only applicable on
the product but they are also accredited for the processing of the achievement of the result.
There are a various sports methods for which patent is sought for. Patent protection is
nowadays sought for a number of innovative things like the methods in which golf balls are
shot, policies and processes of fitness training, procedures of training of the baseball pitches,
procedures of swimming training and so on. Generally the patent is being issued for the 20
years at least in most parts of the world. The Patent act of 1970s provides civil as well as
criminal remedies against the cases of infringement of the patented rights of the owners.
However a recently emerging in importance instrument is the Trade Secret. This
might be considered as a process or pattern for the compiling information that is hard to
acquire and by means of which the business owners can obtain a competitive edge over their
peers and the competitors. On many instances it have been recorded that leakage of
confidential business information have occurred and the team members of a certain agency
have themselves been involved with the act of leaking the information (Klein and Wueller
2015). In the American NBA a glowing evidence in this context, is evident. In the year 2008,