The legal play behind athlete trade marks

Melanie McGuirk and Ben Travers, Partners at Foot Anstey, consider the legal significance of high-profile athletes like Luke Littler and Cole Palmer expanding their trade mark portfolios.

Increasingly, sports personalities are becoming brands, their reputation and image being a source of income. Like any brand, trade mark registration helps to protect that asset and creates opportunities to commercialise it, as well as to safeguard the brand from being commercially exploited or harmed by others.

Seeking a trade mark registration for their name is particularly good practice where high-profile athletes see value in their brand for revenue creation in gaming or merchandise ranges. The UK does not have a system of protectable ‘personality rights’ per se, but trade mark law allows well known individuals to register names and images as trade marks if they are distinctive for the goods and services in respect of which they are being registered.  

Most commercially savvy athletes will already have considered and sought protection for their name or nickname. Alan Shearer, David Beckham and Tiger Woods have long been doing so in relation to goods such as clothing, perfume and sports equipment. The footballer Kylian Mbappé owns an EU trade mark for his distinctive crossed-arms goal celebration and the former sprinter Usain Bolt owned an EU trade mark for his well-known lightning-bolt victory pose.

Luke Littler owns a number of registrations for his nickname ‘The Nuke” in relation to darts equipment and sportswear. Cole Palmer has registered each of his name, signature, a shivering arms logo and ‘Cold Palmer’ nickname in relation to various goods including in particular clothing, sunglasses and jewellery.

The primary driver for these trade mark registrations is likely to be value creation, in that registrations create a tangible aspect of a sports person’s brand which can then be licensed to commercial partners and monetised.

Littler and Palmer have also sought trade mark protection for images of their face, which is a new development in the expansion of athletes’ trade mark portfolios. The images comprise black and white close-up photographs of their faces, very similar to passport photos. This approach of registering as true a likeness of their face as possible is likely to have been carefully considered so as to provide the athletes with a method for tackling deepfakes or the unauthorised use of their digital replicas online, particularly the non-genuine endorsement of products.

This is a short excerpt from an article originally published by Insider Sport.

Read the full article here.