• Journal of Legislation Research
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• no.54
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• pp.345-382
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• 2018

Sports events are not copyrighted and sports organizer's profit from sports events is not subject to intellectual property law in our legislation. Most other countries, except for France, do not also recognize sports organizer's profit as an intellectual property right. For this reason, legal grounds protecting sports organizer's profit must be found from current law such as tort law or Unfair Competition and Trade Secret Protection Act. It is irrefutable that these laws play a significant role in protecting sports organizer's profit by imposing restrictions on taking unfair advantage of others' efforts or investment. Nevertheless, protecting sports organizer's profit through such laws has its limits because sports events and relevant information outside the protection category of intellectual property law are considered as public domain. Therefore, introduction of sports organizer's intellectual property right through legislation will serve to faithfully protect sports organizer's profit. Even countries where spectator sports industry is fully in force actively discuss the issue of introducing sports organizer's intellectual property right. Intellectual property law, like other laws, is keenly subject to international trends due to market globalization and sensitively responds to the trends. I believe that further discussions are highly required about the introduction of sports organizer's intellectual property right that properly reflects international trends.