Saturday 30th October 2021
Dispute over the free kick spray
“Simple people” bring FIFA to their knees
The world football association is a very powerful and immensely rich institution. With various own legal organs and an army of lawyers. However, this does not protect the association from losing a process that is comparatively small in the billions of football.
The world football association FIFA violated patent law when using the free kick spray and lost a legal dispute against the inventor in Brazil. By using the product free of charge, FIFA acted with flagrant malicious intent, a civil court in the state of Rio de Janeiro ruled after a notification from the judiciary. The court therefore upheld the plaintiffs in their appeal against an earlier judgment and ordered FIFA to pay 50,000 reals (around 7,600 euros) for moral damage and an amount still to be calculated for property damage. The association can appeal against the judgment.
The two inventors – the Brazilian Heine Allemagne and the Argentine Pablo Silva – had provided FIFA with the free-kick spray for the 2014 World Cup without having reached an agreement with it on the purchase of the patent. The plaintiffs stated that they had applied for the patent 21 years ago, according to a statement from the Rio de Janeiro judiciary on Thursday. “We are very happy, but also shocked that two simple people like us have brought down a giant like FIFA”, quoted the “Gazzetta dello Sport” Allemagne and Silva. The two had therefore rejected an offer from FIFA of 500,000 US dollars for the patent. After the World Cup in Brazil, the world association continued to use the spray, but without consent.
The distance between the wall and free kicks is marked with the spray. Silva and Allemagne have patented the product in almost 50 countries. After the process in Brazil is over, they want to sue in other countries as well. Also in Germany, as Silva told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. One can now afford heavy artillery in the foreseeable future: “So far we have only been able to fight with toothpicks.”
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