Copyright Law Blog

San Diego California Sports & Business Law Attorney Sebastian Gibson – the Business of Sports

July 22nd, 2009 at 06:42am Under trademark law

Even if you don’t live in a town with a professional sports team like San Diego, California or Los Angeles, CA, it is likely you still have at least amateur sports teams in almost every city of Orange County, and even if your city just has high school teams in La Jolla, Del Mar, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Marcos, Vista and Escondido or the cities of Huntington Beach, Westminster, Buena Park, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, and Laguna Hills, Santa Barbara, Buena Park, Temecula, Indian Wells, La Quinta, or Palm Springs, you and the players on those teams are probably sports fanatics as we are, and may also have a legal issue in many of the sub-areas of sports law without even knowing it. 

Few firms in the U.S. today practice in the field of Sports Business Law. It requires a knowledge of entertainment law, intellectual property, sports brand development, professional regulations, broadcast and media law, sports sponsorship, corporate finance, labor law contract law, merchandising, anti-trust law and litigation.In addition to having knowledge in those fields, it helps to have a strong background in international law, if not English law as well.

Clients at a sports law, law firm are sports team owners, cities, athletes, stadium management companies, and sponsors. You will be dealing with product manufacturers, the media, banks, the USPTO, sports organizations, arbitrators and the courts.

If you are a true sports aficionado, you will wish the business of sport had less to do with the law, but with each passing year it seems to have more rather than less.The rules referees must now live by often makes it useful if they are lawyers in their spare time.

As society becomes more and more concerned with fairness, we see greater use of replays, and less discretion given to the officials to call the game or to correct a mistaken call on their own.Sports teams and their lawyers must constantly be vigilant to protect their trademarks and branding and spend as much time promoting their team and their sport as running the day to day operation.Fortunately, in the end, the time and cost of sports business law attorneys are worth it, with the value of most sport teams rising year after year.

The opportunities to get into sports business law are limited. Many more law students take courses in sports law than will ever have the chance to practice the little they learn in law school.

If you are an athlete, or a business in the sports world and need the assistance of a sports lawyer, call us or visit our website at http://www.californiaattorneyslawyers.com to learn more about how we can assist you. Or call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson about your sports law, entertainment law, intellectual property, trademarks, sports brand development, professional regulations, broadcast and media law, sports sponsorships, corporate finance, labor law contract law, merchandising, anti-trust law and litigation.

An Orange County, Fullerton and Riverside California Trademark Lawyer’s Humorous Take on Trademark Infringement

July 18th, 2009 at 06:42pm Under trademark law

To a great many people in Southern California, the law regarding infringement of trademarks, copyrights or intellectual property in general is so confusing, it is humourous. Whether you live in Indio, Riverside, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, CA, San Diego, Huntington Beach, Orange County, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, or Newport Beach, you are as likely to be confused by the law of infringement as someone who lives in La Jolla, Anaheim, Irvine, Westwood, Santa Monica, Westminster, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach, Buena Park, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga or Yorba Linda.

 

The standard for whether there has been an infringement by one person of another’s intellectual property, namely their patent, trademark or copyrighted work, often comes down to whether there is the “likelihood of confusion” in the public.

 

To test this test set forth by the courts and by statutes, I went out into the public to see how readily the public was confused.

 

I didn’t have to go far to find confusion.I found a dog walker trying to find an address.

 

“Can I help you find something?” I asked her.”I’m confused,” the dog walker said.

 

“I thought 64th street would be right after 63rd street.”

 

“They put another street between the two,” I said, “just to confuse people like you.”

 

“Figures,” the dog walker said.

 

Clearly, the city was guilty of infringement on a person’s senses and well being.

 

I next went into a coffee shop that wasn’t one that I normally went into. But instead of having the normal choices of tall, grand and venti, this shop had single, double and triple.I could see that I wasn’t the only one confused.

 

I asked the person standing in line ahead of me, “Is a triple three times the size of a single, or is it the same size but with three shots of espresso in it?”

 

“Beats me,” the person said. “What I want to know is what these low-fat sticky buns have that could possibly make them low-fat.”

 

I wondered, with such confusion among members of the public, was this coffee shop infringing on either the other coffee shop’s terminology or were we, the public, just naturally confused about things.

 

I decided I needed to see someone really smart, so I went to see a professor who was in part responsible for the new atom smasher and the super collider to see if he was faring any better than the rest of us.

 

“Professor, can you clear up some confusion the public is having?” I asked.

 

“I’ll certainly try, but first I’m having difficulty understanding how some news channels can ignore facts when they report the news.”

 

“We all wonder that,” I told the Professor.

 

“But they simply report dogma, assume that their opinions are correct and arbitrarily reject anything to the contrary. Or worse, they simply state what they want to believe and sprinkle it with a few facts.”

 

The Professor was clearly confused. “Is that how we scientists should be doing our work? Reject any type of testing or experimentation or observation to develop our theories?”

 

I left the Professor in a highly agitated state of confusion. Clearly the news anchors were adding to the public’s confusion.

 

I found myself wandering inside the mental ward of the local hospital for some clarity.

 

“Are you confused?” I asked one of the patients.

 

“Not at all,” he replied. “I know who I am today and even if I think I’m someone else tomorrow, I still won’t have any doubt about it.”

 

“What if you think you’re me tomorrow?” I asked.

 

“I still won’t be confused,” the patient said. “What you feel is up to you. Like they say, I’m okay, You’re okay. Who cares if anyone moved the cheese.”

 

I left the mental ward feeling much better about things. Confusion is in the eye of the beholder. The infringer isn’t the one confused. He may cause confusion in others, but the infringer is actually quite happy with him or herself.

 

At least some of the public appeared not to be confused, even if they might only be the ones believing they are someone else.

 

If you have an intellectual property matter in Orange County, San Diego, in Riverside, Palm Springs or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your Riverside Trademark Lawyers, and Orange County and San Diego Trademark Attorneys. For this reason, be sure to hire a California law firm with trademark lawyers who are ready to serve you in many areas such as Chino Hills, Mission Viejo, Newport Beach and Palm Desert so you are properly represented when you need to be.

 

If you have an intellectual property matter and need to know your rights, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com  and learn about your rights and options. You can also call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson on the phone about your legal matter.