The VAR makes people talk inside the field of play (remember Cádiz), but also outside of it. And not only in the hangover of football matches … After a year and a half of administrative battle, the European Union Intellectual Property Office has agreed with Miguel Galán (pre-candidate for the Madrid Federation and director of the CENAFE coaching school) in his lawsuit with Mediapro for the industrial property of the Video-Assistant Referee brand, since the production company filed an opposition that has been rejected in its entirety, for which it will have to pay all the costs of the process. Before this resolution there is still an appeal, but everything indicates that the beneficiary could exploit his trademark for the next ten years.
Galán has made headlines in the media in recent years for being the scourge of the RFEF in the Haiti Case, the Recre Case and in the Soule Operation. Now he is focused on the next elections to the Madrileña, where he already lost to Paco Díez four years ago and with whom some sources say that he could agree to make a common front against Jesús Peramos, the other pre-candidate. But while the elections arrive, Galán seems willing to continue bothering the RFEF. “I will send a burofax to the RFEF and Mediapro so that they stop using the VAR name, and later I will negotiate with FIFA the sale of the industrial property of the brand,” he assures AS. “Nor do I rule out starting to market the implementation of the VAR with operators in other countries, since they have also granted me the brand in China and the US (see attached photo).”
A bizarre story
This peculiar history of VAR comes from afar. As we have been telling in AS all this time, FIFA and UEFA took over what today we know as video refereeing, but the germ of the invention was Antonio Ibáñez de Alba. The former NASA scientist from Cadiz was hired in 1995 by Mario Conde to develop a series of patents with total freedom, so this 'brainiac', outraged by Tassotti's nudge against Luis Enrique in the World Cup 94, prepared the preliminary report of an intelligent system for assistance in arbitration decisions. And not only in football, but also in other sports. Conde encouraged him to patent it last century, so Valores Antillanos (the wealthy businessman's company for which he worked) registered it on September 1, 1995, with 20-year patent protection. Thus, Conde became the owner of the patent for the invention of the mechanism that today is known as VAR, but López always believed that this right was his, so years later he unsuccessfully wrote to FIFA, the Federation and Adidas to claim when they used the VAR without it. He accredited (with papers) that the 'toy' was born in his head and that he had registered the project in the General Registry of Intellectual Property in 1999 under the name of El Fútbol del Siglo XXI. Its subsequent extension was registered in 2006.
Several criminal complaints later against Ángel María Villar (former president of the RFEF) and García Aranda (head of the FIFA refereeing department), in addition to Infantino (president of FIFA) and Luis Rubiales (current president of the RFEF) as subsidiary officers , López asked for 15 million euros in compensation as compensation that he would donate to non-governmental organizations in the fight against Alzheimer's and cancer and he even became associated with Miguel Galán, just a year ago, when he appeared in the middle of the story claiming industrial property on February 7, 2019 to be able to commercialize your rights once you had submitted all the relevant documentation at the Spanish Patent Office. The objective of López y Galán was and is to negotiate with the Federation the use of technology in Spain or to prohibit it if it does not agree to approach positions requesting if necessary precautionary measures while the sentence arrives. In the RFEF they do not want to pronounce on these intentions, understanding that Galán “only wants publicity for his particular interests”. However, months ago there were approaches between the parties to seek an understanding that did not arrive since, behind, according to some of those present, other issues appeared that had nothing to do with the main one and that focus on the continuous Galán-RFEF fight for the coaching courses.
Galán's strategy
How did Galán get involved in this VAR issue? The businessman saw that there were already six records of the acronym VAR, so he paid 850 euros online at the European Union Patent and Trademark Office (EUIPO) to register in a more descriptive way the VAR-Video Assistant Referee trademark with the reference number 018019997. Interestingly, on April 12, as AS learned, Mediapro filed an opposition against Galán's trademark, based on another that it already had registered in Spain (VAR, to dry) from June 22, 2018. This with the reference number M3697106. The EUIPO then gave them two months to conciliate, in what is called a period of reflection and, despite the fact that there were rapprochements, they did not reach an agreement. Hence, it was the EUIPO that decided now. With this current situation it could be said, without fear of error, that this peculiar story will continue …