Ambush marketing vs. official sponsorship: is the international I.P. an unfair competition regime a good referee? - Núm. 21, Enero 2016 - Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial - Libros y Revistas - VLEX 735660953

Ambush marketing vs. official sponsorship: is the international I.P. an unfair competition regime a good referee?

AutorDiego Pardo Amézquita
CargoLawyer (LL.B) from Universidad de los Andes (2009, Bogotá, D.C., Colombia). llm in Intellectual Property, University of Turin, Italy, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (2015, Turin, Italy). Specialization Diploma on Public Law (2012) and Competition Law (2014) from Universidad Externado de Colombia
Páginas5-24
5
diego pardo amzquita*
Imagine you throw a party and invite heaps of brilliant, interesting people.
Imagine your roommate fails to help with the planning or the cost.
Imagine the night of the party, your deadbeat roomie shows up
and claims co-sponsorship. Imagine watching in awe as the
freeloader takes credit for your expenses and effort.
Now imagine that party just cost you $20M.
A. D. Sauer1
The 1984 Summer Olympic Games held in Los Angeles have been –and will
continue to be– remembered for footage from Swiss athlete Gabriela Andersen-
Schiess’s dramatic struggle to finish the women’s marathon. She refused medical
assistance to avoid disqualification, despite showing heat exhaustion symptoms,
right leg limping and left arm cramps. Her truly admirable feat drew the atten-
tion of a horrorized crowd that cheered her as she limped to the finish line, and
has therefore been branded as a symbol of human determination for competitive
achievement through one’s own efforts. However, those Olympiads have also been
branded as the birthplace of another type of off-field competition of efforts that
has drawn the public’s attention and led firms to compete amongst them ever since:
The one between official sponsorship and ambush marketing of large scale events.
* Lawyer (LL.B) from Universidad de los Andes (2009, Bogotá, D.C., Colombia). llm
in Intellectual Property, University of Turin, Italy, and the World Intellectual Property
Organization (2015, Turin, Italy). Specialization Diploma on Public Law (2012) and
Competition Law (2014) from Universidad Externado de Colombia. diegopardo18@
hotmail.com Fecha de recepción: 2 de enero de 2016. Fecha de aceptación: 27 de julio
de 2016. Para citar el artículo: Pardo Amézquita, D. Ambush Marketing vs. Official
Sponsorship: Is the International I.P. an Unfair Competition Regime a Good Referee?
Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial n.º 21, Universidad Externado de Colombia, enero-junio
2016, pp. 5-24. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18601/16571959.n21.01
1. Sauer, A. D. Ambush Marketing: Steals the Show. Brandchannel. Retrieved on December
2014, from: [www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=98].
ambush marketing vs. official
sponsorship: is the international i.p.
an unfair competition regime
a good referee?
Diego Pardo Amézquita
6
    .º 21 - -ju  2016 - . 5 - 24
This paper will address the problem of why and to which extent must ambush
marketing be contrasted, provided that it is a practice that ordinary intellectual
property and competition law has been unable to deter, and that extraordinary
measures are difficult to adopt at an international level. This difficulty jeopardizes
the interest for official sponsoring of major events, and the events themselves. For
this purpose, this paper will (i) briefly examine the intersection between intellectual
property rights and the business of sports, in order to (ii) encase ambush marketing
as a controversial –yet not necessarily illegal- business practice that exploits another’s
commercial effort and deflects attention from official sponsorship of major events.
It will then present (iii) the traditional and extraordinary legal responses to these
practices, and the issues and difficulties that they raise, to finally conclude that
(iv) there is an urgent need to harmonize, at an international level, the legality –or
not- of the matter, regardless of (v) the inherent ambush marketing paradoxes.
I. The Intersection of Intellectual
Property Rights and the Business of Sports
It is an undeniable fact that for many years now, sports –as old as mankind– are
no longer confined to mere hobbies, recreational activities or carrier choices. They
are now huge business opportunities and large scale events of gigantic commercial
importance. With a total of over 4.7 billion viewers –or nearly 70% of the world’s
population– of the 2008 Beijing Olympics2, 3.6 billon viewers in the 2012 London
Olympics3, or the 3.2 billon viewers of the 2010 fifa World Cup held in South
Africa and the 3.4 billon viewers expected for the 2014 World Cup edition in
held in Brasil, it comes as no surprise that both the Olympics and the fifa World
Cup are the two biggest multi-day sporting events, each broadcasted to an audi-
ence in over 200 countries. Other single-game sporting events such as El Clásico
(Barcelona vs. Real Madrid football games) and the annually held Super Bowl (a
single game American football championship) draw over 100 million viewers, with
the latter’s half time show attracting more than 115 million viewers. With such a
potential for brand exposure, it is not surprising that a 30-second advertisement
spot at the 2014 Super Bowl half time show reached an all time record cost of $4
million dollars. And still, Forbes magazine reported that the consensus among
industry executives was that
[Advertising at the Super Bowl] is still the best bargain around. Only during the game
can advertisers reach an audience transcending individual demographics. With 40%
female viewers and multiple generations represented within the 110+ million viewers
2. [www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2008/beijing-olympics-draw-largest-ever-
global-tv-audience.html].
3. [www.olympic.org/Documents/IOC_Marketing/London_2012/LR_IOC_Marketin-
gReport_medium_res1.pdf].

Para continuar leyendo

Solicita tu prueba

VLEX utiliza cookies de inicio de sesión para aportarte una mejor experiencia de navegación. Si haces click en 'Aceptar' o continúas navegando por esta web consideramos que aceptas nuestra política de cookies. ACEPTAR