NCAA Student-Athletes’ Rights of Publicity, EA Sports, and the Video-Game Industry. The Keller Forecast

Abstract

The Keller v. Electronic Arts, National Collegiate Athletic Association, and Collegiate Licensing Company class action complaint filed in May in the Federal District Court in San Francisco received considerable fanfare among academic and legal practitioners, as well as controlled skepticism among intercollegiate athletic governing bodies and video game industry executives. As the factual scenario and class action prospects have been forecasted in prior scholarship, this contribution will: (1) briefly pose related intercollegiate athletics amateurism policy considerations; (2) review major intellectual property theory points; (3) summarize the crucial questions for the court and each party, posing several possible answers; and (4) conclude with future research directions, with the embedded promise of forthcoming elaborate manuscripts on the same stream.

Keywords: Intellectual Property, Right of Publicity, Video Games, NCAA Student-Athletes

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K19, K20, K29, K30, K39, K40, K41, K49