선수 인도스먼트계약의 법적 과제

Abstract

Companies make use of name, likeness, or characters of sport celebrities as image improvement and marketing strategies for the company. The endorsement means that a company sponsors sport players. The endorsement contract tends to be achieved with the intention of projecting the images of sport players on the products. So, such factors as affirmative or honest images and higher record of player performances are essential for the contract. As a result, the contract demands the morals clauses that players should behave themselves with dignity doing their best in the games and should not do any negative behaviors violating images. In concluding the contract, a company sponsor or an advertiser requires explicit clauses on advertising model's dignity. The intention of providing the clauses asks the physical management of the model, which is generally recognized as faithful contract. Furthermore, the clauses imply that a model should have wide range of dignity duty for the behavior, and the contractor provides a possibility or condition easily escaping from binding power of the contract. The content of the clauses sometimes limites individual right of a celebrity and violates free activity of a sport player when it is applied with vague or extensive concept. The following clauses of endorsement contract are the typical instances: any act involving moral depravity; in addition to drugs or alcohol, any situation or occurrence of degrading public reputation, regulation offence, scandal, or ridicule; any act of morally mean behavior; any act causing public reproach, insult, scandal, or ridicule. The morals clauses do not totally mean the risk avoidance device for a company, The clauses also do not mean the agreement of a negotiation between a company and a sport player. In consideration of the influence of sports on the society, the morals clauses should be recognized if they are essential factors of social morality. In addition, the clauses should be examined or reviewed for the side of establishing and exercising the contract. The endorsement contract focuses on the value related to name, likeness, image of a sport player. So, the legal nature of the right related to personal identity needs to be established. That is, the problem of publicity right which was from the United States of America has been introduced. The right is not different from the privacy right as “right to be let alone.” However, it contains the active right to be watched for “right in the publicity value” recently accepted as judicial precedent by a lower court in Korea. The main purpose of accepting publicity right is the approval of property or financial value on personal right. So, the basic trait of publicity right should be regarded as property right. However, it should never be ignored that publicity right treats personal right as another side of publicity right. In conclusion, the publicity right is the property right combined with personal right rather than property right by itself. In this view, publicity right has a trait of basic property right, but publicity right is limited in advance by some factors of personal right.