MUMBAI: The world’s richest footballer Lionel Messi has won a European court case that will permit him to trademark his own name for sporting goods.
The Argentinian had applied for the rights to trademark his name at the European Union Office for Intellectual Property (EUIPO) in 2011, BBC reports.
Arrigned against Messi in the case was Spanish cycling brand Massi, which claimed that their names were similar and as a result, would affect its branding strategies.
However, the EU’s General Court ruled that Messi was famous enough that any confusion cannot arise as such.
The EUIPO had earlier ruled against the star striker, saying that names were similar, because their dominant elements, “consisting of the terms ‘Massi’ and ‘Messi’, are almost identical visually and phonetically”.
The General Court, the EU’s second highest court, disagreed.
“The football player’s fame counteracts the visual and phonetic similarities” with Massi, the Court ruled.
“Mr Messi is, in fact, a well-known public figure who can be seen on television and who is regularly discussed on television or on the radio,” the court stated in its judgment issued Thursday.
