Who Owns College Coaches’ IP?

Tanyon Boston, University of Dayton School of Law, is publishing …And Bring Your Playbook: Who Owns the Intellectual Property Created by College Coaches? in volume 19 of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology (2014). Here is the abstract.

The average compensation package for top college coaches exceeds $1 million per year. This Article takes a peek behind the numbers, using examples from actual coaches’ employment agreements, to uncover the role that intellectual property plays in generating those salaries.

Despite the potentially enormous value of intellectual property created by college coaches, determining the owner of this intellectual property can be surprisingly difficult. This Article suggests that universities should own intellectual property that is both created in connection with coaches’ duties and dependent on university associations for its value. It also suggests that, to the extent that coaches’ employment agreements do not address intellectual property ownership issues, university intellectual property policies should be used to fill in the gaps. This Article concludes with a comparative discussion of the intellectual property ownership rights of student-athletes, using the O’Bannon v. NCAA case as a benchmark.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.