Sports Law
Our firm’s award-winning sports law practice has several firsts to its credit. From the creation, monetization and protection of the IP rights of several Indian IPL Cricket teams from their inception, to representing India’s biggest fantasy sports unicorn in a large-number of pioneering cases in Indian courts, our sports law practice punches well above its weight.
Members of our firm advise clients on a wide variety of legal issues related to sports, such as contracts, sponsorship deals, intellectual property rights, dispute resolution, and regulatory compliance. We represent sportspersons, teams, franchises, leagues, sports organizations, and other stakeholders in the sports industry. We also negotiate sports content licensing and distribution arrangements, merchandising deals and brand ambassador contracts.
In newer spaces such as online gaming, members of our firm are involved at the inception of a game, identifying the potential legal issues around its deployment, mitigating and managing risk as also helping secure the necessary permissions and protections for its successful commercialization. Members of our firm also have both experience and expertise in areas such as ambush marketing, character merchandising, celebrity endorsement and personality rights issues.
While the intersection of IP and sports law offers up the opportunity for the protection and enforcement of trademarks, copyrights, designs and patents of sportspersons, teams, leagues and associations, sports law as a broader subject requires a deep understanding of both the business and the potential of sports. This deep understanding is the core strength of the members of our sports law practice.
Our online IP enforcement team is responsible for the online monitoring and enforcement of trademarks, copyrights and broadcasting rights in relation to a variety of sporting events and protects the digital assets of our sporting clients across various distribution platforms. Our proprietary AI-enabled online anti-piracy enforcement solution has had immense commercial impact in reducing (and in some instances altogether eradicating) the availability and distribution of pirated content across a variety of channels.
Members of our firm have played a critical role in shaping public discourse around the differences between fantasy sports and online gaming as also advocating for a self-regulatory regime in the area of fantasy sports, which regime is on the cusp of becoming a reality.
Our firm has been the front runner in taking the issue of intellectual property rights around NFTs in sports and their intersection with personality rights, to the courts, resulting in the setting down of pioneering jurisprudence on the subject.