A Brazilian court ordered FIFA to compensate Heine Allemagne, inventor of the ‘spray’ used by referees to mark fouls and distance from the barrier, for violating copyright and acting in bad faiththeir lawyers reported Thursday. An appeals court in Rio de Janeiro accepted the appeal presented by Spuni, a company owned by Allemagne, and determined that the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) repair “the damage caused by the unauthorized use of the ‘spray’ in competitions.” .
The value of the compensation will be defined in a next stage of the process, which has dragged on since 2017 in the Brazilian Justice, as indicated in a note by Allemagne’s lawyers, that demand the payment of at least 50 million reais ($ 9.1 million) for your client. The victory in the Brazilian Justice could establish jurisprudence, once the Allemagne firm has the patent for the ‘spray’ registered in 43 other countries.
The Rio court considered in its judgment, delivered on Wednesday, that the FIFA he acted in bad faith during the negotiations he had with the Brazilian inventor for the use of the ‘spray’. According to the complaint, the governing body of world football “abused the good will” of Allemagne, “using the ‘spray’ for free and taking advantage of the know-how” of his company for “the implementation of the product, while hiding the brand of the same.”
According to his lawyers, Allemagne advised FIFA to adopt the use of foam ‘spray’, now an essential element for the field referee and which has made it possible to boost the rhythm of the matches. Nevertheless, the inventor claims that he was “never” “adequately” recognized or rewarded for it, which in his opinion “violates a fundamental guarantee” and constitutes an “illegal practice in Brazil and in various jurisdictions.”
Allemagne’s defense recalled that the FIFA Ethics Committee, based in Geneva (Switzerland), opened an official investigation into the case in 2020 due to possible “deviations of conduct and legal”, but this was “summarily” shelved after obtaining a victory in the first instance in Brazil, a decision now reversed. “The reopening of the investigation will be one of the international fronts that will be analyzed by the inventor’s lawyers,” they stressed in the note.
