Image Credit: Refinery 29 Tennis presents itself as the most individual of sports. No teammates, no substitutions, one player against another until someone breaks. But the moment a player walks onto a grand slam court, they step into one of the most structured commercial and legal hierarchies in professional sport, a system that determines not just how they play, but how they look, what they wear, and who profits from the image they project. That hierarchy has five tiers. Each one has a...

Image Credit: Nike There is a photograph that circulated in late 2022 of Kylian Mbappé, standing outside a team photoshoot at the French national team training ground, refusing to go in because the French Football Federation's sponsorship programme included fast food chains and betting companies, and Mbappé, who at that point had a personal deal with Nike and a carefully cultivated public image, would not have his face associated with them. He issued a statement directly: he had decided not...

Image Credit: Fashion United As the world's newest country (independent since July 9, 2011), South Sudan occupies a uniquely paradoxical position in the African IP landscape: its fashion visibility on the global stage is extraordinary, yet its domestic legal infrastructure for protecting creative work barely exists. On the IP side, the gap is stark. South Sudan's Constitution places intellectual property under the exclusive legislative and executive powers of the national government, but that...