스포츠중계에 관한 法的 爭點

A contract for sports broadcast gives rise to many legal issues. The first issue is who initially owns a right to broadcast a sports game. The initial ownership of a sports game is often derived from athlete's or/and broadcasting company’s copyright. Hence, the Article deals with this issue. Athletes’ public performances generally should qualify as copyrightable subject matter. As a few exceptions, some sports moves such as ice dancing or figure skating routines, may qualify for copyright protection due to their creativity. But many sports moves in the adversarial sports are in fact intended exclusively to ensure the victory of athletic contests and will not be afforded copyright protection. Sports broadcasts will be copyrightable as an imaginary copyrighted work. Sports broadcasts satisfies the requirement of 'creativity' since cameramen manipulate the image of sports events by zooming in or out players' moves and changing camera angles. Even live broadcasts in sports meet the requirement of 'fixation in tangible medium' because a work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is 'fixed' if fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission. Copyright of a sports broadcast will be vested in co-authors of the sports event but, if it is a work for hire, the employer will be afforded copyright protection in regard to the sports broadcast. The third and last issue is whether sports broadcast may violate athletes’ image right or publicity right. According to Korean case laws, athletes hold their image right and publicity right.