3 3 March 2005

News:

The troubled passage of the UK Gambling Bill looked set for completion as the Government agreed to final concessions to obtain opposition support in the House of Lords.

Real Madrid has launched proceedings in France, to add to those already started in Belgium against leading online gambling operators, Ladbrokes, Victor Chandler, Betfair, Sportingbet, William Hill and Mr Bookmaker. The French action is for a preliminary injunction to stop the use of Real Madrid’s logos and pictures of players and an action for trade mark infringement.

Sri Lanka’s sports minister, Jeewan Kumaranathunga, has won the latest round in a bitter dispute that has paralysed Sri Lanka’s national cricketing organisation. The government won the modification of a court order which had effectively blocked the implementation of the Sport’s Minister’s decision to replace the Sri Lankan Cricket Board.

Features:

Real Madrid’s legal action against William Hill, Ladbrokes, Sportingbet and four other remote gambling operators may be speculative but if successful, its implications could be profound for sport. Most sports organisations, in the UK at least, seem not to have grasped yet the potential significance of the issues involved.

The London Marathon is a unique and challenging event in the British sporting calendar. As Nick Bitel, CEO of London Marathon and partner at Max Bitel Greene solicitors explains, these challenges extend to its legal framework.

As Real Madrid announces its legal assault on remote-gambling sites, including Ladbrokes and Betfair, for alleged breaches of the club’s image rights, James Hennigan, solicitor at Hammonds, assesses the club’s chances of success in the UK.

To Caribbean cricket fans the ongoing dispute involving the West Indies Cricket Board and many of its key players - including (now former) captain Brian Lara and (now former) vice captain Ramneresh Sarwan - is the latest twist in the dispute over central contracts and the backdrop to a series against South Africa. To the two telecommunications companies involved - Cable & Wireless (“C&W”) and Digicel - the dispute is the backdrop to a battle for control of the mobile phone market in the Caribbean. To sports lawyers the dispute illustrates the battle for control over the players’ image rights, starkly evidences the benefit of central contracts between a governing body and its elite players and rightly or wrongly raises allegations of ambush marketing by C&W, a company with a long history of bona fide investment in the sport, especially in the WICB.

Designers have a valuable weapon in the EU ‘Community Design’ Regulation. Gary Assim, partner, and Rachel Parman, trainee, both of the intellectual property group at Shoosmiths, examine its benefits.

To represent Great Britain at the Olympics is the goal of all athletes. In this article, Richard Baldwin, Lead Tax Partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP, states that the challenges are not only physical, but financial.