The Games Where Ideas Win Gold: Intellectual Property, Innovation, and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics

Drafting Credit: Sidratul Muntaha, Research Associate

Image credits: via Freepik

When athletes from 92 nations competed across sixteen disciplines at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, most of the world’s attention was on the snow, the ice, and the medals. What we do not see is the legal system that made all of it possible. Behind every race and every broadcast lies Intellectual Property (IP). It funds, protects, and shapes the Games. Sports today are not just physical competition. It is also a product of creativity, technology, and legal protection.

At the centre of this is the International Olympic Committee. IOC has spent decades building one of the most comprehensive IP portfolio in the world. The IOC holds trademark rights and legal protections over what it calls “Olympic Properties”. This includes the rings, mascots, slogans, including the words “Olympic” and “Olympic Games” themselves.1 These are not just symbols. They are assets. For Milano Cortina 2026, even visual elements like the stylised “26” logo and mascots were trademarked.2 This shows how branding itself is treated as valuable IP.

The foundational legal instrument beneath all of this is the 1981 Nairobi Treaty, which makes the Olympic rings one of the very few symbols in the world protected by a dedicated international treaty against unauthorised commercial use.3 For the 2026 Games, Italy went further and under its obligations as a host country, it passed legislation expressly aimed at prohibiting what it called “parasitic activities”. This means any activity that creates a false commercial association with the Games capable of misleading the public about sponsorship.4 The law is very strict, and it prohibits the registration of any trademark, in any language or class, that recalls the Olympic symbol or its associated events.

The Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026, working with the IOC and Italian Association for Intellectual Property Protection (INDICAM), reinforced this with awareness campaigns and an October 2025 conference dedicated specifically to IP protection at the Games.5 The commercial logic is straightforward: the IOC’s entire funding model depends on exclusivity. In the 2021–2024 cycle, it earned about USD 7.7 billion, and a large part of this is redistributed to athletes and sports bodies worldwide.6 This reliance on IP is not unique to the Olympics. It can be seen across all levels of sport, where organisations and companies rely on it to stay competitive, generate revenue, and strengthen their position in the industry. Whether through branding, media rights, or technology, stakeholders depend on IP to sustain and grow their operations. IP, in this sense, is not just protection, it is a leverage. One of the most visible ways this plays out is through patents, which protect innovations that directly impact performance and athlete experience.

Patents, in particular, highlight the role of innovation in sport. Companies use them to protect sports technology. For example, Nike’s Dri-FIT ADV technology7 for athlete uniforms, used mapped knit structures with yarn combinations to manage moisture across competing demands for moisture management and breathability.8 Ralph Lauren developed “Intelligent Insulation”9, a temperature-responsive fabric system developed with Skyscrape for Beijing 2022 that adapts to ambient cold without batteries.10

Copyright played an equally important role. Olympic Broadcasting Services produced around 6,500 hours of content for the Games. This included drone footage, AI-based cameras, and advanced replay systems.11 Streaming numbers also increased massively, with billions of minutes of content watched. The Olympic digital platforms reached over 100 million users, nearly double the total achieved across the entirety of Beijing 2022.12 All of this was possible because copyright protects the content and allows large-scale investment. The IOC also decided to produce the official Olympic film in-house, keeping full control over this creative work.13

However, the biggest legal tension was not with piracy or counterfeiting. It was with the athletes themselves. Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter restricted non-official sponsors from using athletes in advertisements during the Olympic period.14 This included even long-term personal sponsors. The reason is clear. If sponsor exclusivity is weakened, the entire funding system is affected. But the tension is real, as athletes today are brands. They earn through endorsements and personal sponsorships. Athlete rights are no longer a single bundle, they are being divided into different parts, each with its own value. Rule 40 sits directly in the path of that unbundling. The IOC’s 2019 partial relaxation by allowed athletes to post up to seven non-promotional “thank you” messages to personal sponsors.15 For Milano Cortina 2026, the USOPC operationalised this further: Athletes were permitted a total of seven such messages during the Games period (January 30–February 24, 2026), subject to strict content restrictions.16

The tension between personal sponsorship and official partner exclusivity, however, remains far from resolved. The ongoing tension at the heart of this system, between the IOC’s need to protect the commercial model that funds the Games and athletes’ legitimate interest in the independent commercialisation of their own image rights, is not a simple one that can be solved by one rule change. It is a structural tension, and its management will define the evolution of sports intellectual property law in the years ahead.

What Milano Cortina 2026 shows is that IP is not separate from sport. It is central to it. Trademarks fund the Games. Patents improve performance. Copyright brings the Games to a global audience. Legal rules keep the system stable and prevent misuse. The Olympic rings may be the most recognised symbol in the world, but behind them is a carefully designed legal structure.

This World IP Day encourages us to see sport through a wider lens. Whether in Olympics, cricket, football, or any other discipline, sport today is built on innovation, creativity, and strong legal foundations. What we see is only one part of the story, but behind every match, league, and broadcast stands a legal architecture as intricate, and as carefully engineered as any bobsled on the Cortina track.

  1. Intellectual Property Protection: Guidelines for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, Olympics.com, https://www.olympics.com/en/milano-cortina-2026/intellectual-property-protection. ↩︎
  2. Gary B. Solomon, Trademarks and Copyrights at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Winter Games, Foley & Lardner LLP (Mar. 5, 2026), https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2026/03/trademarks-and-copyrights-at-the-2026-milano-cortina-olympic-winter-games/. ↩︎
  3. Maria Luigia Franceschelli, The Power of Olympic Intellectual Property and How Italy Protects It at Milano-Cortina 2026, Hogan Lovells (Feb. 10, 2026), https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/the-power-of-olympic-intellectual-property-and-how-italy-protects-it-at-milanocortina-2026. ↩︎
  4. Supra note 1; Urgent Provisions for the Organisation and Staging of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and Prohibition of Parasitic Activities, No. 16, Acts of Parliament, 2020 (Italy), converted into Law No. 31, Acts of Parliament, 2020 (Italy). ↩︎
  5. Olympic Games and Intellectual Property: The Value of Distinctive Signs, INTERPATENT, https://www.interpatent.it/olympic-games-and-intellectual-property-the-value-of-distinctive-signs/?lang=en. ↩︎
  6. Milano Cortina 2026: IOC Unveils Digital-First Marketing Strategy, MINISTRY OF SPORT (Jan. 9, 2026), https://ministryofsport.com/milano-cortina-2026-ioc-unveils-digital-first-marketing-strategy/. ↩︎
  7. U.S. Patent No. 9,700,077 B2, Article of Apparel with Variable Air Permeability, (issued July 11, 2017) assigned to Nike, Inc. (inventors: Michael R. Baron, Karin E. Carter, Sophie L. Mather, LaShurya M. Wise), https://patents.google.com/patent/US9700077B2/en. ↩︎
  8. Gold-Medal Innovation: The Patented Technology Powering Milan-Cortina 2026, Foley & Lardner LLP (Feb. 24, 2026), https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2026/02/gold-medal-innovation-the-patented-technology-powering-milan-cortina-2026/. ↩︎
  9. U.S. Patent No. 2019/0269188 A1, Thermally Adaptive Fabrics and Methods of Making Same, (Sept. 5, 2019) (inventors: Brent Ridley, Jean Chang, Leah Bryson), https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/067768268/publication/US2019269188A1?q=pn%3DUS2019269188A1; See also U.S. Patent No. 10,793,981 B2, System and Method for Thermally Adaptive Materials (Oct. 6, 2020), Other Lab, LLC. ↩︎
  10. Gary B. Solomon & Mackenna Dunn, Technology and IP in the Opening Ceremony Looks for Milano Cortina 2026, Foley & Lardner LLP (Feb. 5, 2026), https://www.foley.com/insights/publications/2026/02/technology-and-ip-in-the-opening-ceremony-looks-for-milano-cortina-2026/. ↩︎
  11. Innovative Broadcast Coverage Bringing Fans Closer to Action than Ever Before at Milano Cortina 2026, Olympics.com (Feb. 11, 2026), https://www.olympics.com/ioc/news/innovative-broadcast-coverage-bringing-fans-closer-to-action-than-ever-before-at-milano-cortina-2026. ↩︎
  12. Broadcast and Digital Figures Show Fans Around the World Embracing Milano Cortina 2026 in Record Numbers, Olympics.com (Feb. 18, 2026), https://www.olympics.com/ioc/news/broadcast-and-digital-figures-show-fans-around-the-world-embracing-milano-cortina-2026-in-record-numbers. ↩︎
  13. The Olympics as a Global Laboratory: Technology, Storytelling and the OBS Vision for Milano, TM Broadcast International (Feb. 9, 2026), https://tmbroadcast.com/olympic-games-obs-milano-cortina/. ↩︎
  14. USOPC, Athlete Marketing for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Milano Cortina 2026: Rule 40 Guidance for the United States (Sept. 2025). ↩︎
  15. Barbara Sartori, Milano Cortina 2026: Brands Navigate the Slalom of Olympic Athlete Sponsorship Rules, Lexology (June 16, 2025), https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=203a656d-e0ea-41e5-a522-df46304b5476. ↩︎
  16. Athlete Marketing for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Milano Cortina 2026, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Comm., available at: https://rule40registration.teamusa.org/Home/R40Education. ↩︎

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