2 1 January 2004

News:

Data Protection Law & Policy is launched this month by Cecile Park Publishing Ltd, the publishers of World Sports Law Report.

The notice to terminate the ten year deal that attheraces negotiated in 2001 with representatives of 49 English racecourses for broadcasting and interactive rights has highlighted once again the risks associated with these deals for both media and sports organisation.

Data Protection managers and their advisors are concerned that the December 8 Court of Appeal decision in the case of Durant v The Financial Services Authority and the subsequent Guidance from the Information Commissioner (‘IC’) on Subject Access has confused rather than clarified company and public sector obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Features:

The period since the late 1970s and early 1980s has witnessed the march of professionalism, increasing standards and increasing stakes both on and off the field with one common product: an increase in the amount of money involved in sport. And as the stakes increased, both sporting and economic, so did the potential for dispute. In a field of law where technical, highly specialised disputes with cross border jurisdictional issues required to be resolved in days and weeks as opposed to months and years, it is easy to identify that lengthy, expensive litigation in the ordinary courts was not ideally suited. Against that background, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was born. This article will consider the organisation and workings of the court from a practical point of view before considering a worked example - the appeal by the Scottish skier Alain Baxter against the sanction handed down by the Federation Internationale de Ski during the last Winter Olympics.

With the development and growth of the sponsorship industry, it has become harder and harder for sponsors to achieve ‘cut-through’ in their activities. The environment is increasingly cluttered with branding, and official partners face the risk not just of ambush marketing but also of finding their event sponsorships undermined by rivals’ activities with different but related properties. This article looks at some of the contractual provisions that sponsors can use to reduce these risks.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations came into force in the UK on 11 December 2003. These Regulations represent a complete u-turn in the law applicable to direct marketing by electronic means and regulate the use of cookies and location-based services for the first time.

A recent spate of lawsuits in France and in the US has put the way in which some major search engines sell search-related online advertising under potential threat. This article considers the practice of selling keywords as search terms and the disputes in France and the US.

On 3 February the Office of the Information Commissioner published revised guidance which goes to the heart of businesses’ data protection obligations. This follows a landmark ruling last December in which the Court of Appeal took a restrictive approach to the scope of ‘personal data’ under the Data Protection Act (“DPA”). This article looks at the implications of the guidance.

The notice to terminate the ten year deal that Attheraces negotiated in 2001 with representatives of 49 English racecourses for broadcasting and interactive rights has highlighted once again the risks associated with these deals for both media and sports organisation. This article examines the backgound to the termination and possible outcomes.