Sports and sports business involves creativity and innovation and IP is all about encouraging and rewarding creativity and innovation by ensuring that investors and inventors/creators/innovators obtain the necessary economic/financial and moral benefits for their inventions, creativity and innovative ideas. Sports business is all about technology, branding, merchandising, broadcasting, media, sponsorship, money, entertainment, fun…
Let’s take any sport’s icon or personality, for example the BBC African Footballer for the year 2018, Mohammed Salah, or Asamoah Gyan ( 2010), or Andre Ayew (2011), or Michael Phelp , the most decorated Olympian of all time… take a look at their sport’s wear and all you will see IP in action. You will identify the use of technology to enhance their performance, brands/trademarks and designs of various sports wear.
The sports industry also includes food and sports memorabilia, media broadcasting rights and licensing deals. How do you watch your favourite football matches? How were you able to watch the match between Manchester United and Man City? Technology and copyright comes to play. There were broadcasting licenses among media houses which involve the commercial exploitation of copyright. It is the copyright protection that prevents anyone without the necessary license from rebroadcasting the match or broadcasting live matches without the consent of the organizers and sponsors of the game.
Many players are involved in sports business, from clubs, leagues and sponsors to media broadcasters and, of course those that produce all the equipment that make high-performance sports possible – the sporting goods industry.
Intellectual Property creates some form of a limited period of monopoly for players in the industry to recoup their investments.
IP is traditionally divided into two parts, namely industrial property and Copyright and Related Rights. Industrial Property Rights include Patents for the protection of technologies/inventions, trademarks for brands and industrial designs for protecting the aesthetic value of goods.
Copyright and Related Rights include literary and artistic works, music, videos, broadcasting, producer’s rights etc. Copyright and Related Rights are obtained immediately the work is fixed while Industrial Property Rights require registration before protection. The only exception to this requirement in the sports industry is the protection of well-known trade marks in the industry and the Olympic symbols and related paraphernalia.
Sports business, in recent times, has been more technologically inclined. The use of natural materials, such as rubber, wood, twine etc., to develop sports equipment are fast being replaced by sports enhancing materials including alloys and polymers. The world’s lightest sports shoes are featherweight and crammed with technology. High technology is the name of the game – the key formula driving the development of sophisticated new products (WIPO supra). These new products are not only appealing to sports elite but to day-to-day users of sport’s wear such as the use of comfortable trainers for sports.
The commercialization of such protected products are subject to licensing from the relevant right’s holder and any person who infringes the rights of the owner by commercially exploiting these performance enhancing sport’s wear stands the risk of legal battles.
Again, protected brands using trademarks cannot be commercially exploited without the consent of the trademarks holder. In Ghana, the commercialization of counterfeit goods including counterfeited sport’s wear such as Nike, Adidas etc. is a crime.
Similarly, where a design is protected, for example, the neon-yellow Nike Zoom Victory Elite spikes, no competitor is allowed to design any footwear with such designs without a license from the right’s holder.
Broadcasting right is a Related Right under copyright and one cannot broadcast a sports event without the requisite license deal. Television and media organizations pay huge sums of money for the exclusive right to broadcast top sporting events live. In this way, investors and sponsors are guaranteed the right to recoup their investment, through this limited monopoly.
This year, we celebrate this positive linkage between Sports and IP, the role IP plays in boosting the sports industry. This successful relationship applies to almost all other industries. Businesses in Africa are being encouraged to utilize the IP system for their economic benefit.
As we enjoy our favourite sports let’s make a conscious effort to identify all the IP in action!