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Showing 7 posts in Name, Image, and Likeness.
What Kentucky High School Athletes Need to Know About NIL Rules
In 2023, Kentucky became the 31st state to permit the monetization of an athlete’s name, image, and likeness for high school athletes. The Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA) amended two of its Bylaws to include new sections regarding students’ Name, Image, and Likeness (“NIL”) benefits, specifically allowing high school athletes to earn money from “product or business endorsements” associated with their NIL and to be paid for their work at camps or clinics. The two bylaws at issue – Bylaw 10 and Bylaw 16 – provide a comprehensive overview of the KHSAA NIL benefit program and the restrictions on compensation for high school athletes. More >
NIL Deals: What Needs to Be in the Contract (and What Gets Missed)
An athlete’s identity is a commercial asset. From the high school track star to the Olympic gold medalist, athletes’ names, images, likenesses, signatures, and other personal attributes carry legal protections and economic value. They appear on jerseys, trading cards, and promotional materials, yet the trademark and right of publicity laws governing these rights offer the ability to sell, license, assign, or transfer any aspect of an athlete’s personality. This makes it all the more important to clearly identify and address both at the outset to avoid disputes. More >
How to Structure NIL the Right Way from the Start
In the ever-changing landscape of college and youth athletics, athletes need to make sure they have a structure in place to both protect and easily monetize their most important and valuable asset: themselves. In the Name, Image, and Likeness (“NIL”) era, athletes have never had more power as it relates to compensation for who they are and what they can do. However, with that power likewise comes pitfalls and risks that each athlete needs to consider before they sign any deal. Before any athlete signs any NIL contract, they need to have a structure in place that properly protects them, their brand, and their rights while also allowing enough flexibility to quickly and efficiently capitalize on opportunities when their value is perceived to be at the highest. More >
Who Owns the Moment? Rights in Sports Photos and Videos
One of the most addictive parts of sport is its ability to capture our imagination and create enduring memories. If we are lucky, we can capture visual depictions of those moments to relive the memories. Whether we are capturing the experience in person on our cameras or at home and watching the experience on our televisions or through social media, sports memories and video or photographic depictions of those memories go hand-in-hand. For me it was Kirk Gibson rounding the bases after his 1988 game winning homerun and Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 8.9 seconds (a/k/a the night he 
directed a choke gesture to Spike Lee). For my son, by far the biggest sports fan I know, it is probably a tie between Omar Cooper’s toe-tap game-winning touchdown over Penn State or the Sports Illustrated cover-worthy diving touchdown by Indiana’s Heisman-winning quarterback that sealed Indiana’s improbable national championship. Many people reading this will know those images. But how? Not everyone watched those games. Those memories were captured and redisplayed. Many people claim rights in those redisplayed memories. More >
Are You Sure That’s Free? Content from Others in Your Social Media
Big business owners, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and influencers are all looking for boosts to their reputations that drive traffic and revenue their way. Using the parlance of the 2020s, they are looking to generate impressions and conversions through clever online marketing—usually leveraging the power and reach of social media platforms. Frequently this takes the form of sharing or reposting content already on social media, sometimes with a creative business-specific twist. More >
March Gladness – New KY Law Allows College Athletes to Profit from Use of Name, Image, and Likeness
On March 9th, Governor Beshear, surrounded by Kentucky college coaches, put his signature on a new law that will allow college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness, an opportunity formerly blocked by the NCAA. This new law opens up many doors for college athletes to benefit from their most closely held intellectual property—themselves. More >
Life, Liberty, Happiness, and…Personality? What to Know about Your Publicity Rights
Believe it or not, there are no federal statutes or case laws protecting your exclusive right to the use of your name, image, and likeness (NIL) or any other defining factor of your identity, such as your voice or signature. Rights of publicity vary state by state, and as a result, these rights are complicated and little-understood. Recently, publicity rights (sometimes called “personality rights”) have been in the news—first for college athletes gaining the ability to profit from their NIL through a recent Supreme Court decision, then for the use of AI-generated clips of the voice of the late Anthony Bourdain in the documentary film Roadrunner. These two very different instances illustrate two sides of the multi-faceted issue of rights of publicity. More >
