Sale of fake team jerseys: no lesser offence

Anyone who sells shirts, sweatshirts or scarves reproducing the colour scheme of football teams risks conviction for selling counterfeit and receiving stolen goods. Nor is it possible to avoid punishment through the application of the rule on thespecial tenuity of the act.

 The Court of Cassation, in its judgment 10236/2026, reiterates that "trademarks registered on official sportswear respond to the need to distinguish a product, linked to the commercial exploitation of the recognisability of that clothing as used by the team in its sports performances and to the increase in marketing in dependence of the notoriety acquired by those products precisely because they are used in the exercise of the typical activity of the sports club". Unsuccessfully, the appellant denied theinfringement by clarifying that after all they were only reproductions of the image of famous football players or of the inscription or photo of a football team.

The Supreme Court confirmed the conviction and recalled that professional sports clubs are businesses to all intents and purposes, with an economic activity made up of trade and goods and services, with the possibility of using brands that enjoy full protection. Already with sentence 33900/2018, the judges of legitimacy had rejected the thesis of the Tribunal of Lodi that had excluded the crime for the sale of the seized shirts because they were so different from the original brands as to exclude the applicability of the criminal rules on counterfeiting. And in any case, in the Court's opinion, those brands were now to be considered "volgarized".

The judges of merit had annulled the seizure of 2,600 shirts of several clubs - including Roma, Juventus, Milan and Inter - arguing that the name of a football team could not be considered as a protected trade mark, because football teams would be born as non-profit associations and because the names of football teams, which often coincide with the names of the cities or regions in which they play, would not meet the requirements of originality and novelty indispensable for trade mark registration.

A conclusion that the Supreme Court dismantled on that occasion and on others. Active in counteracting the spread of fake clothing and gadgets is the Guardia di finanza, which also triggers seizures as part of the fight against counterfeiting. Everything is put under lock and key: from stickers, to jerseys, caps, socks, and even club funeral posters.