Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Know When To Hold Them, When To Fold Them, And When To Walk Away: Tiktoks Are Professional Sports Franchises' Ace In Collective Bargaining Negotiations, Angelica Varona

Pepperdine Law Review

TikTok, the social media app, has become both a central force in entertainment, creating a slew of influencers and young celebrities, as well as an important tool in all things branding and marketing. Athletes have recognized the value of social media and fan engagement and have taken to becoming content-creators on the platform. The growing presence of professional athletes on the app brings up important issues of copyrightability and ownership of the content they are producing. This Comment considers the nature of athlete content-creation on TikTok as well as the employment scheme and contractual responsibilities that form a part of …

Good Initiative, Bad Judgement: The Unintended Consequences Of Title Ix's Proportionality Standard On Ncaa Men's Gymnastics And The Transgender Athlete, Jeffrey Shearer

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Title IX fails to provide the tools or guidelines necessary to equalize opportunities for all student athletes in the collegiate setting despite the government’s continuous effort to explain the law. This failure is because judicial precedent has largely developed around the binary proportionality test of compliance. Title IX was originally intended to equalize educational opportunities for male and female students in order to remedy past discrimination in our society. However, the application of Title IX has frequently created fewer opportunities in athletics due to the unintended relationship between the proportionality standard and the social phenomenon that is the commercialization of …

Modifying Amateurism: A Performance-Based Solution To Compensating Student–Athletes For Licensing Their Names, Images, And Likenesses, Chaz Gross

Chicago-Kent Journal of Intellectual Property

Amateurism is evolving and the NCAA is paying for it. With the NCAA’s focus set on preserving amateurism, it prohibited student–athlete compensation for any activity related to sports. However, college athletics are a lucrative business that generates its primary revenue from licensing Division I men’s basketball and FBS football players’ names, images, and likenesses. After years of criticism for its rules and regulations, the NCAA faced antitrust scrutiny from both former and current student–athletes. In 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the NCAA’s restrictions on student–athlete compensation violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. While the …

I’M The One Making The Money, Now Where’S My Cut? Revisiting The Student-Athlete As An “Employee” Under The National Labor Relations Act, John J. Leppler

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This Article argues why the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Big-Time Division I College Football and Men’s Basketball student-athletes are legally “employees” and why these student-athletes are inadequately compensated for their revenue-producing skills.

Part II of this Article sets forth the common law “right of control” test and the National Labor Relation Act’s (NLRA) special statutory test for students in a university setting, and shows how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the judiciary determine whether a particular person, specifically a university student, meets these standards and is legally an “employee”. Moreover, the NCAA asserts it does not have …

Social Media In Sports: Can Professional Sports League Commissioners Punish 'Twackle Dummies'?, Daniel J. Friedman

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Daniel J. Friedman writes an article discussing the rise and popularity in social media use by professional athletes. He then discusses some of the new problems that have arisen due to social media misuse and the power of the Commissioner to restrict and punish the players for misuse. The article culminates with a case study hypothetical related to content based social media misuse and whether the Commissioners of professional sports league can punish a player for the content of their social media messages.

Pause The Game: Are Video Game Producers Punting Away The Publicity Rights Of Retired Athletes?, Brandon Johansson

Nevada Law Journal

This Note argues that widely recognized retired athletes, such as Jim Brown, whose likenesses have been used in video games, will be able to recover damages under likeness laws if video game producers do not take more action to protect themselves from such lawsuits. Part II of this Note will discuss the history of likeness rights and how they have developed in our legal system. Part III will discuss how licensing agreements operate in sports through collective bargaining agreements between the current athletes and the player unions. This Note will then argue, using Brown v. Sony as an example, that …

Dispute Resolution At Games Time, Urvasi Naidoo, Neil Sarin

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.