Study On The Legal Protection Of The Right Of Publictiy Of Athletes In Our Country And The Problem

The athlete image right refers to those athletes who have registrated in a domestic sport association, once or now play for a certain club, domestic or not, and have participated in some international competitions, at the same time maintain excellent competitive state and performance, good behavior with elegant temperament, thus have been known, recognized, loved to become famous public figures as athletes.Being one of the rights of personality, the image right after its owner’s "well-known" gains attribute of personality right with commercial value, which is a kind of transition from personal right to property right, a new type of right that belongs to the category of economics of law, and has its own distinctive features as well. Each athlete has potential image right in principle, but from the perspective of commercial value, only those athletes who have become well-known actually have image right.The research object of this study focuses on the contents and problems of our image right for athletes. By adopting documentary method, case analysis, logic analysis, and the relevant foreign materials, this study tries to seek the theoretical support and advice in combination with the present situation and the development in our country, in order to realize the goal of protection of the athlete image right.The study shows that with sports towards internationalization and commercialization, mobility of athletes begins to increase, especially in the field of international competitions, change of club, business or welfare activities. These activities ask for relatively perfect measures for dealing with sports disputes to maintain the core interests, namely economic or reputation and so on, of relevant stakeholders including athletes, sports organizations, clubs and sponsors. So the athletes’ right of image needs to be restricted and regulated by the contract and law. The "well-known" athletes are public figures, who should be restrained not to do things that may harm the images, for example: participate in advertising or sponsorship that does not conform to its promise.Through the case study of the domestic athlete image right disputes and related legal problems in recent years, this paper comes up with several practical suggestions as follows: first, modify and perfect the right of personality, extending the legal basis for image right; second, enrich the items of protection for athlete’s image right; third, gradually create the system of property law to safeguard the economic interests of sport business; fourth, strengthen the propaganda, supervision and implement of the management system of the athletes’ commercial activities.