Man Utd in ‘Football Manager’ licensing complaint
Manchester United has accused the developers of the popular “ Football Manager” game of infringing its trademark by not using the official club crest.
“Football Manager” is a long-running video game series which allows players to play as the manager of domestic and national teams from 118 leagues across the world.
In the latest edition, “Football Manager 2020”, 26 leagues are fully licensed, allowing clubs’ official logos to appear in the game. These include Germany’s Bundesliga, the Dutch Eredivisie, as well as the second-to-fifth tiers of English football.
Licensing issues prove to be an obstacle for sports video game makers every year, and developers and publishers have to be creative to get around them.
Sports Interactive (SI), the developer behind “Football Manager”, and its parent company Sega have made a policy of not commenting about licensing issues in public. WIPR has contacted SI to discuss the licensing issues facing video games before, but was told: “Our legal and licensing is all handled by our parent company ( SEGA) and they don’t comment on our legal and licensing matters as a matter of course.”
The game’s developers have always tried to still represent unlicensed clubs in-game. Brazilian teams often appear under a three-letter acronym, while Italian champions Juventus appear in this year’s game as “Zebre”.
Most other teams appear under their real name but with a generic shield-shaped crest generated using the team’s colours—including Manchester United.
The club has now taken exception to this practice and sued Sports Interactive and Sega in English court.
According to Manchester United, the unlicensed use of its name in-game is an infringement of its trademark rights. The club also argued that the generic crest work-around “deprives the registered proprietor of its right to have the club crest licensed”.
Defendants SI and Sega hit back, arguing that Manchester United was trying to “prevent legitimate competition in the video games field by preventing parties not licensed by the claimant from using the name of the Manchester United football team within such games”.
Manchester United has appeared in every edition of “Football Manager”, and its predecessor “Championship Manager”, since 1992 “without complaint,” the defendants said in a written filing at the English High Court.
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