World Intellectual Property Day 2019 The Australian Story of Intellectual Property and Sport
26 April 2019 is World Intellectual Property Day. This year, the event is focusing on intellectual property and sports. The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Francis Gurry, has emphasized: 'Intellectual property rights underlie and empower the financial model of all sporting events worldwide. The WIPO elaborates upon the theme of this year's celebrations: 'This year's World Intellectual Property Day campaign Reach for Gold takes a closer look inside the world of sports. It explores how innovation, creativity and the IP rights that encourage and protect them support the development of sport and its enjoyment around the world. The universal values sports encompass excellence, respect and fair play power their global appeal. Today, thanks to advances in broadcasting and communications technologies, anyone, anywhere, can follow sporting action around the clock, tracking the performances of their favorite athletes and teams without leaving home. WIPO emphasizes: 'Sports have become a multi billion dollar global industry one that generates investment in facilities (from sports stadia to broadcasting networks) employs millions of people around the world, and entertains many more. In this context, it is worthwhile reflecting upon Australia's distinctive contribution to the jurisprudence on intellectual property and sport. One of the foundational intellectual property cases in Australia concerned sport namely, horse racing. The High Court of Australia held in the 1937 case of Victoria Park Racing Recreation Grounds v Taylor that there was no property in a "spectacle" Professor Jill McKeough of the University of Technology Sydney has explained the significance of the case in the collection Landmarks in Australian Intellectual Property Law. She reflects: 'Victoria Park Racing is still an important decision in the light of attempts to expand notions of property and control of information. McKeough notes that the 'case foreshadows some of the great debates on whether the "sweat of the brow" leads to creation of protectable subject matter; whether the common law recognises rights of privacy; and whether baseball statistics somehow infringes on personality rights. Moreover, she observes: 'The principles discussed are relevant, for example, to attempts by sports associations and various sporting leagues and codes to assert control over athlete blogging, posting photographs, podcasting (audio online) vodcasting (video online) and the use of player statistics. Major sporting organisations have sought to utilise a variety of forms of intellectual property to protect sporting events. Sport has raised issues in respect of copyright law, trade mark law, personality rights, patent law, and sui generis legislation for major sporting events, like the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. There has often been pressure by major sporting organisations to Australian government to provide for expansive and extensive intellectual property protection in respect of sport.