Introduction

The intellectual property vested in sports sector was somewhere less understood and identified
till late 19th century. However after the beginning of major sports events like Olympics and
Asian games, the sponsors and other persons who invested labour and creativity in small things
came to be recognised. The development in the sports sector were also the result of
commercialization of many events, broadcasting of such events, championships, tournaments
and other teams and leagues that hosts sporting events. Different kinds of IP rights stimulate
the growth of the sports industry in different ways. The five important categories of IP rights
(patents, trademarks, design rights, copyrights, and trade secrets) are used in the sports sector
to protect assets, generate value, and stimulate growth. There has been an evolution of the most
popular sports, such as football, tennis, basket, cricket, and so on into mega international
events. They have also evolved into profitable domestic sports events like; Major League
Soccer (MLS), the English Premier League (EPL), The Spanish La Liga. The organisers of
these sporting events on the international level have been able to reap immense financial
rewards by inter alia exploiting and leveraging on aggressive marketing campaign taking
advantage of the marketable potentials resident in these sports. The events like 2008 Olympic,
2006 FIFA world cup final, 2011 cricket world cup final, public demand for instant news or
real time generated news with results led to cutthroat competitive struggle, watched by millions
of people with billion dollar investment, organized & managed by big giant companies like
COCA-COLA, PEPSI etc. individually or jointly has significant economic activity associated
with number of legal right like Intellectual property worthy of protection holding monopoly to
restrict traditional media & internet service providers who are gaining money at the expense of
big corporates has triggered legal dispute in the field of intellectual property, contract law,
competition law & common law doctrines as to who will ultimately controls the information
generated from the event, way the public receives it and the rights associated with it. The legal
theories explaining sports rights juggling with source of information, rights with respect to the
information i.e. ownership rights and rights of stakeholder in the events like broadcaster, key
players, managers, licensee, sponsors, franchisee etc. Each of these stakeholders will have
different interests or rights associated with the exclusive licence to prohibit the unauthorized
broadcasting & its end user outside the Member State for which the licence is granted as the
where one right trumps one over the other & under different factual conditions which court has
to unresolved.
Research Question
Whether real time broadcasts of live sporting events should be subject to copyright laws in the
first place?
Hypothesis