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World cup guidelines on the usage of its trademarks in connection with the upcoming Brazil Football World Cup have been issued by FIFA. These created some concerns on advertisers about to launch their marketing campaigns associated to the event. Indeed they might have planned to display world cup trademarks, images of football players and maybe had also considered to perform ambush marketing campaigns also relevant under a gaming law perspective. The main principles set forth in the World Cup guidelines are the following:
- Advertisements using general football terms are not prohibited, but they cannot display the FIFA official trademarks;
- Tickets promotions as well as contests/lotteries using a FIFA official trademark are prohibited, unless organized by a FIFA partner;
- Merchandising products as well as in-store decorations can show Brazil related terms or the Brazilian flag, but shall not reproduce a FIFA trademark; and
- FIFA trademarks cannot be incorporated into domain names and cannot be placed on websites in proximity of the company’s logo or to create hyperlinks or on social media.
The above merely are the World Cup Guidelines from FIFA and therefore they are not binding per se. And indeed some commentators found them arguable in some parts. However, it is very likely that FIFA will be closely watching the compliance with its terms during the World Cup also forcing Brazil to adopt ad hoc laws strengthening the protections for such trademarks.
Likewise, based on my experience, national teams will be monitoring potential abuses of their trademarks and of the image of their football players raising issues on whether and within what limits they hold an exclusivity right that can be enforced against for instance websites including gaming websites where such images might be showed. In this respect, the usual recommendation to advertisers, but also website managers and operators running sportsbetting websites, is to use “action” shots rather than posed ones and shots of multiple players rather than individuals and to use them in context of an upcoming match where possible. However, also in this case the matter shall be reviewed in its peculiarities.
Also, during such kind of events we frequently see battles between official sponsors and their competitors to which it is challenged the performance of ambush marketing strategies. Ambush marketing is defined by Wikipedia as
a marketing strategy wherein the advertisers associate themselves with, and therefore capitalize on, a particular event without paying any sponsorship
And during the last football world cup in South Africa the press gave considerable coverage to the fact that thirty-six female Dutch fans were kicked out of the match between Denmark and The Netherlands after it was suspected that they had purposely worn orange mini-dresses as a means of endorsing the Dutch Bavaria beer, while the official sponsor of the World Cup was the Danish company Budwaiser. In these circumstances the proper balance of the rights between the parties depends (again) on the peculiarities of the case and therefore requires an ad hoc review which will also take into account that FIFA is very careful in protecting the interest of its partners.
Finally the enforcement of World Cup guidelines shall be reviewed also in a “social” enviroment. Indeed, one issue might pertain to the exercise of trademark exclusivity rights in relation to hashtags on social media like Twitter. If a company that is not an official sponsor of the World Cup uses a FIFA trademark as part of its hashtag, will that be a breach of FIFA’s trademark rights? And if a sportsbetting operator uses the hashtag #worldcup to update its customers on the new offered odds on the event?
This is a very interesting topic also because for instance the sanctions for unfair commercial practices and misleading advertising in Italy are up to € 5,000,000 and as usual feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio to discuss and follow me on my Facebook page, Twitter, Google+ and become one of my friends on LinkedIn.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Mike Mozart
