Legal framework for the use of intellectual property in sports activities

Abstract

Key words: sports activities, sports activities legal regulation, temporary laws, ambushmarketing, image rights, local rulemaking
 The article analyses the legal regulation of the use of intellectualproperty in sports activities. The relevance of the study is justified by the fact that theincome of the global sports industry is increasingly depending on the use of the intellectualproperty by sports organizations.The author notices that adoption of temporary laws aimed at protecting the intellectualproperty rights of sports organizations who organize major sporting events ina country are distinctive features of sports activities. There were two similar laws inthe Ukrainian legislation. Although these laws contained some gaps, this experienceshould become a basis for the introduction of the concept of ambush marketing on aregular basis in the domestic law.Analysis of international agreements in the sporting sphere shows that nowadaysamong the world sports organizations, only intellectual property of InternationalOlympic Committee has an exclusive basis of protection. At the same time, the factthat in general the use and protection of intellectual property is given too little attentionin international agreements in the field of sports gives greater importance tolocal regulations adopted by sports authorities.According to the established practices of foreign sports organizations, professionalrules and contracts between the athlete and the organization contains mutual restrictionsof the use of a number of intellectual property objects constituting the athlete’simage. To date, in Ukrainian practice, only regulations and contracts of several footballorganizations contain the similar provisions, which at the same time have a numberof shortcomings. One of the issues is terminological ambiguity in image rightslegal phenomena, which is still new to Ukrainian practice, and therefore requires theconsistency of definitions between different sports organizations.Thus, although Ukrainian legislation creates the background for domestic sportsorganizations to benefit from their intellectual property, it still requires the adoptionof some new important definitions.