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Complicated Legal Questions Make Terrible Surveys

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

Last week's edition of Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal revealed the results of a Turnkey Sports Poll taken in January, in which more than 800 senior-level sports industry executives spanning professional and college sports were asked the following:

Who should own the intellectual property of a PLAYER?S NAME?

• Player 47.35%
• It?s in the public domain 28.16%
• League 11.02%
• Club 9.39%
• No response/Not sure 4.08%

Who should own the intellectual property of a PLAYER?S STATISTICS?

• It?s in the public domain 46.12%
• League 37.55%
• Club 10.61%
• Player 2.86%
• No response/Not sure 2.86%

Who should own the intellectual property of a PLAYER?S IMAGE?

• Player 52.65%
• League 18.37%
• Club 15.51%
• It?s in the public domain 8.57%
• No response/Not sure 4.90%

And the correct answer to each one of these questions is?......"No response/Not sure". The reason is because it all depends on how the name, statistic or image is being used. What a terribly confusing survey....

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).