Sport is big business. Top teams are recognised on a global scale as powerful brands and can turn over hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Television contracts can be measured in the billions. Teams now rely on many assets, in addition to talent on the pitch, to bring home this financial success. These assets are increasingly intangible. Some of these are readily discernible (for example, team logos) as traditional forms of intellectual property. But as teams become more and more sophisticated and begin to operate like other big businesses, another type of right is increasingly important – that of confidential information.
The protection of confidential information has recently been the subject of significant public attention in Europe and North America due to alleged misuses by competing sports teams. On the Formula One (F1) circuit, the McLaren team was recently fined $100m (£49m) over a dossier of confidential technical information about their competitor, Ferrari. The implicated McLaren crew member has also been sued by Ferrari in the High Court.
