ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ethical issues in the areas of player publicity rights, owner trademark rights, broadcast rights, and patent rights. The right of publicity has been an important issue in sports videogames. Free speech outweighs the right of publicity in fantasy sports. So-called group licensing adds complexity to the right of publicity because group licensing acknowledges the publicity rights of journeyman players as well as of the stars. In conceptualizing the ethics of intellectual property rights in sports, it is important to keep in mind that intellectual property shares many attributes with personal property. The court found that the unauthorized broadcasts interfered with the Pirates' property right, and that the defendant radio station, which broadcast the games in order to increase its listening audience, was appropriating profits belonging to the Pirates. The court applied what has come to be called the "transformative effects" or the "transformative use" test, which has become very important in the legal and ethical area.
