How fashion and football intersect through Industrial Property, focusing on patents, industrial designs, and trademarks.
Industrial property is present in nearly every sector of society, including fashion and sports, particularly football. But how do these two markets connect?
The association is not always immediate, yet they intersect as multiple sporting goods are created by the fashion industry. At that point, law emerges to secure proper protection for those creations through the legal mechanisms of Industrial Property.
Using examples of products and technological processes related to football and the fashion sector, this analysis seeks to demonstrate how such innovations can be protected under Law No. 9,279/96, in order to safeguard and encourage sector development and sustainable industrial competitiveness.
Far beyond titles, football clubs have increasingly invested in protecting their intangible assets.
Patents protect technological equipment, apparel, and footwear that improve athlete performance. One example is an invention patent for improvements in goalkeeper gloves, increasing grip with the ball and allowing greater efficiency in handling it.
Industrial designs, in turn, provide original and innovative visual features to products, increasing market value as well as the consumer's sensory experience. Configurations applied to football boots, shin guard shapes, and ornamental patterns on jerseys are examples of industrial designs registered before INPI.
Registering a football team as a trademark, whether name and/or crest, allows clubs to enter licensing agreements, which are frequently executed with fashion brands.
Data was collected from INPI's online database to identify and select products used as examples in this research. A theoretical review was also conducted on industrial property through written and electronic sources, including books, scientific articles, master's dissertations, and web publications.
This study is relevant because proper registration of creations and technological innovations brings benefits to both the fashion and sports sectors, as well as to society as a whole. For this reason, dissemination of the topic among professionals in both sectors is essential, in favor of industrial property and in support of research, knowledge, and technology, which contributes to national economic growth.
Source: Legal article
Image credit: Personal archive
Responsible Attorney
Clarice Fernandes