Legal Research

World Cup of Law Part I

By Mark Lewis

Four years ago for World Cup 2006, I had some fun posting about the legal aspects of FIFA’s World Cup, so here in 2010, I thought I would do the same thing, a quadrennial tradition, if you will. Once again, IP is a prominent area whenever FIFA is involved as has already been evidenced in 2010 in South Africa which I’ll detail below. Employment issues with regards to the World Cup have been posted everywhere so I’ll not repeat them here.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve seen is how FIFA’s trademarks have found their way into South Africa legislation and even municipal units in South Africa have gone to the extent of including Fifa’s trademark protection in their legislation. Many logos and words relating to 2010 were protected in South African Law, including:

This not being a post of IP/Trademark law exclusively, I’ll not go any further than to point out the legal troubles that 30 Dutch women found with regards to their choice to wear orange mini-dresses to a match this week.

For those of you fortunate enough to attend some matches in South Africa there are some interesting driving regulations that you should be aware of.

This world cup has led to legal changes in Australia with regards to airing the matches on TV.

It is also thought that Arizona’s infamous new immigration law could impact the USA bid to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cup.

Perhaps most fun of all it seems that the better the system of law that a nation has the better chance it has to do well at the World Cup, which raises obvious questions about Canada’s national team or maybe Canada’s laws?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 18, 2010 (boomark / email).