The world of football seems to get used to the presence of VAR during games, so much so that many have missed him during Nations League matches. But now, as AS has learned, the owners of the VAR, Antonio Ibáñez De Alba (inventor and who has the intellectual property of the VAR- Video Assistant Referee since 1995) and Miguel Ángel Galán (owns the industrial property of said brand) have signed an agreement to jointly claim before Mediapro, Hawk-Eye, FIFA, UEFA and RFEF, among other football federations, the “immediate cessation of the use of VAR”.
Both, who will soon have a meeting with FIFA to try to negotiate “a friendly and agreed solution for their use”, announce that “they will reliably require all entities that use the VAR without their consent in order to demand immediate cessation of the use of the brand name and the patent and technology invented by De Alba“. Both owners hide that in what is established by law 17/2001, of December 7, on Trademarks and other applicable legislation, whose registration of a trademark and patent confers on its owner the exclusive right to use said trademark in economic traffic and the power to prohibit third parties from using such distinctive signs without marketing them.
Both De Alba and Galán They have warned that they could go to court to request civil or criminal actions against those who violate their right of exclusivity and request the necessary measures to safeguard them.
Miguel Ángel Galán and Antonio Ibáñez de Alba, industrial and intellectual owners of the AR- Video Assitan Referee
It would not be the first time that both have gone to court for the VAR. At the beginning of October, as AS already recounted, Miguel Angel Galán (pre-candidates for the Madrid Federation and director of the CENAFE coaching school) won the industrial property of the Video-Assistant Referee brand, from Mediapro in the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union. Whose resolution awarded him the possibility of exploiting his trademark for the next ten years.
On the other hand, Antonio Ibáñez de Alba is the inventor and has the intellectual property of the tool. The NASA scientist from Cádiz was hired in 1995 by Mario Conde, and outraged by Tassotti's nudge against Luis Enrique in the 1994 World Cup, he drew up the preliminary report of an intelligent system to assist in arbitration decisions. That project, which he called 'The Football of the XXI Century', was registered in the General Registry of Intellectual Property in 1999 and expanded in 2006