Posts Tagged: "ncaa"

On June 30, the NCAA issued an interim policy that will allow athletes at all divisions of the NCAA to “take advantage of name, image, and likeness [NIL] opportunities.” There are several legal and practical implications that flow from this interim policy change. A college athlete can now use his or her name, image, and likeness for commercial gain. While not exactly endless, the possibilities are massive. Presumably, athletes can now license their name to promote sports brands (think Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Gatorade to name just a few)…. By some estimates, the sports merchandising market over the last few years hovered around $15 billion. It’s about to get a lot bigger very soon.    

On June 21, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston (Alston) in which the nation’s highest court affirmed an injunction entered by the Northern District of California prohibiting the NCAA from restricting education-related benefits that member schools can extend to student-athletes. Consolidated by the Supreme Court last December with related proceedings in American Athletic Conference v. Alston, this decision brings a close to the latest chapter in the ongoing skirmish between NCAA member schools and their student-athletes seeking a larger cut of revenues earned by colleges and NCAA athletic associations.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently took a step toward letting student athletes “benefit” from use of their name, image, and likeness. The move comes after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a Fair Pay to Play Act allowing collegiate athletes in the Golden State to accept endorsement deals once the law takes effect in January 2023. On Tuesday, October 29, the NCAA’s Board of Governors voted “unanimously to permit students participating in athletics the opportunity to benefit from the use of their name, image, and likeness in a manner consistent with the collegiate model.” The key phrase here is “in a manner consistent with the collegiate model,” which invokes the NCAA’s commitment to the nebulous tenet of “amateurism.” Pragmatically, this vote amounts to two things for student athletes. First, this process will not happen immediately: the Board set a deadline of January 2021 for changing the rules. Second, and most notably, the Board carefully refused to acknowledge or confirm that student athletes would actually be paid. In other words, this vote is merely a shuffle in the direction of college athlete compensation by way of their “right of publicity.”

UMBC has filed U.S. Trademark Application No. 87838422 which would protect the use of the standard character mark ’16 over 1′ for the sale of athletic apparel including footwear, hats and athletic uniforms. The university also filed U.S. Trademark Application No. 87838378, covering the standard character mark “RETRIEVER NATION”, and U.S. Trademark Application No. 87838377, covering the standard character mark “UMBC RETRIEVERS”. Each of these trademarks was filed on March 17th, one day after the UMBC Retrievers’ victory over the Virginia Cavaliers.

The harder and more unbreakable the helmet the better it is to protect from a cosmetic standpoint, but the more likely the helmet will transfer the power of any blow through to the brain… Helmets today are reasonably good at protecting from blunt impact, but that does not mean they do not suffer from serious problems. “A major weakness in helmets is that they do not protect from any twisting or torsion motion, for example when a wearer suffers an impact that forces his neck to rotate at a substantial speed,” Abu-Taleb explains. “This is a major cause of concussions, as the brain rattles within the cerebrospinal fluid inside the skull as soon as the rotating comes to a stop, causing multiple potential points of impact between the brain and skull.”

Every year countless stories arise of individuals, churches, and small businesses, receiving cease and desist letters from the NFL or NCAA for unauthorized use and reference to their respective SUPER BOWL, MARCH MADNESS, and other trademarks. The success of these enforcement letters comes from a mixture of the organizations’ trademark rights under the Lanham Act and the fear that these financially well-endowed organizations could sue. The International Olympic Committee (“IOC”), and its national governing bodies, like the USOC (collectively the “Olympic Committee”), also aggressively enforce their rights in their Olympic trademarks, slogans, and symbols (the “Olympic properties”). The Olympic Committee not only employs the traditional methods of other sport organizations, but has several additional weapons that provide a true monopoly on the Olympic properties; thus, significantly increase its success.