Diego Maradona just scored a victory, but not on the pitch. On Monday the ex-footballer and current manager of Argentinian football team, Gimnasia La Plata, won the court case against Italian fashion design duo Dolce & Gabbana.
As you may remember from a previous post, Dolce & Gabbana's A/W 16 Alta Moda show featured a model in a long skirt matched with an embellished version of a S.S.C. Napoli football club jersey recreated in satin and embroidered with Sophia (Loren)'s name on the front and with the name of Argentinean football player Diego Maradona and a sequinned number 10 on the back.
During the runway, the model wearing this ensemble was also carrying a soccer ball. Both Loren and Maradona are considered icons in Naples, so Dolce & Gabbana wanted to pay tribute to them with this design.
Yet, they should have known better and, in the same way as they asked permission to use images from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, they may have reached out to Maradona and explained what they had in mind.
Indeed, fourteen months after the show, in September 2017, Diego Maradona filed a legal suit in the Milan Court of First Instance, accusing D&G of having taken unfair advantage of the reputation of his name as they never asked for any permission.
On Monday Milanese judge Paola Maria Gandolfi ruled in favour of the footballer, stating that it is not fair to parasitically exploit another person's fame.
Condemned for illegally using the name of the footballer, D&G will now have to pay 100,000 Euros (plus legal expenses that amount to over 13,000 Euros) to Maradona and, while that's a consistent sum, it is not a huge amount of money, yet what's important in this case is the final ruling that constitutes a warning for the future for what regards hidden advertising and illegal merchandising and represents something new for Italian law when it comes to the use of the name and image of footballers and athletes in general.
The judge compared indeed using Maradona's name without his permission to selling fake goods on a market stall: "The use of Maradona's name was explicitly finalised to appopriating in the D&G collection those attractive components that characterised the prestigious professional career of the legendary footballer."
It should also be highlighted that Maradona's name is protected by trademark law as the ex-football player has a number of European Union trademark registrations for his name (filed in July 2001 and registered in January 2003), including use on Clothing Products, Cosmetics and Cleaning Products, Computer & Software Services & Scientific Services.
This is not the first time Maradona sues somebody for illegitimately using his name: in 2017 he sued Konami, publisher of Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, that used his name in a game without his authorisation. The two eventually reached an out-of-court settlement stating that the company was going to compensate him for the use of his name and likeness in the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, while Maradona was going to become PES Ambassador until 2020 and promote the game on Konami's behalf. In that case Maradona also stated he was going to use part of the money received by Konami to improve the situation of football pitches located in disenfranchised areas of his home country.
On his Instagram page Maradona happily announced the victory in the court case, highlighting that the fashion design duo should have asked for his permission.
Damages were contained, though: Maradona originally asked for 1 million Euros, but the request was drastically reduced considering that the garment was part of a high fashion collection, so it wasn't produced in series and, being part of the Alta Moda runway, it was probably only for sale on order for the high fashion clients of the Italian duo.
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