Brazil is ready for the game

Brazil is getting ready...all the structures are almost in place for the forthcoming World Cup and actually this year games FIFA 'Confederations Cup' . Everyone is eager to use the games to boost their own businesses' activities and of course to market their products in connection with the games. However, the companies that have already won the bet to sponsor the games are also eager to get that exclusivity --they have earned that right for which they paid.

FIFA holds the exclusive use of term such as "Mundial 2014", "Copa do Mundo", "Copa 2014" or "São Paulo 2014" . The federal government, however, has an "exclusive license" to use the terms and are taking all precautions to protect the rights of trading partners. It is reported that the number of illegal marks overtakes the one reported in South Africa, which hosted the two competitions in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

A spokesperson for FIFA noted that the Confederations Cup and the World Cup have already closed all the deals relating to marketing and the ‘the package partner’ amount to 20 businesses and has reached a value of U.S. $ 1.4 billion.

Yet, prevention is one of the policies that Brazil is also working on – according to the following:

More than 100 cases of illegal use of the marks relating to the Confederations Cup and the World Cup in Brazil have been reported in the last six months. The person in charge for the protection of FIFA trade marks, Auke-Jan Bossenbroek, said that they have managed to contact most of the illegal traders and have solved the matters in an amicable way. In the same line, but quite controversial, the the FIFA Marketing Director, Thierry Weil noted that "What annoy us are big companies, who know they are doing something wrong."

The news noted that the surrounding of the stadiums will have a restriction on traders – the places will only be available to authorized ones. On the actual game days there will be two to three FIFA people who will be reporting any illegal cases to the local security.

Certainly, preventing people creating an unauthorised association between their goods and services and the games; and preventing any other activity that undermine the sponsor revenues as for example the sale of counterfeit and unnoficial goods should form part of the success of the games.

Mexico --Football legends to be trade marks for beers

Entrepreneurs in Mexico have united efforts to launch a series of beers named ‘la liga cervezera’ (the beer league). Their first beer label, named after the Argentinean footballer Diego Maradona, has already been registered. The trade mark is a composite mark comprising a word, a number and colours. Specifically, the label is represented by the number 10 which appears directly over the word ‘Maradó’. These are written over vertical lines comprising the colours white and light blue (the t-shirt colours of the Argentinean team). The manufacturers affirm that there are more to come but have yet not been registered. Because of that, they prefer not to disclose the others footballer.

Now then, if we analyse the trade mark, many questions are brought into mind. Firstly, is this a strong mark? Clearly, the colours resemble the t-shirt of the national team. Moreover, the number 10 and the depicted name of the player (not in full) is an illustration of his personal t-shirt. These issues, in a case of infringement, will be considered when determining whether two composite marks are sufficiently similar to support a likelihood of confusion claim. Secondly, is this launch a type of merchandise? Indeed, there is an image and personality involved in the label and thus, some countries do not allow registration of this type of signs. Lastly, we could ask: are the players informed?

We just need to wait the other labels to get underway to see whose t-shirt would be a trade mark in ‘the beer league’ and to come back with answers regarding the distinctiveness of such marks.