ITALY Law and Practice Contributed by: Maurizio Marullo, Giorgio Vagnoni, Francesco Amoresano and Fausto Consolo, LAWP Studio legale e tributario
publication or damage to their reputation, and entitles the right-holders to apply for the termi - nation of the abuse. Image rights are untransfer - able, indefeasible and inalienable. The Copyright Law (Article 96-97) establishes that an individual’s image can only be used or sold with their consent. The only exceptions occur when said reproduction is: • justified by the notoriety or holding of public office of the person concerned; • justified by the necessity of justice, security, scientific, educational or cultural purposes; or • related to facts, events, ceremonies of public interest or held in public. During the 1980s, the FIGC, the Italian Foot - ballers’ Union and leagues signed a covenant to regulate advertising activities of professional clubs and athletes, by which players were enti - tled “to use in any lawful and decent form their image, even for profit, to the extent it is not asso - ciated with the names, colours, jerseys, symbols or markings of the club they belong to or other clubs” . Similarly, clubs could allow their spon - sors to use their players’ image for commercial purposes only in the case of “team pictures” in uniform and to promote sponsorship agree - ments with the club. Currently, the Italian Footballers’ Union By-Laws (Article 26) grant to the Italian Footballers’ Union the use of players’ images and names related to professional activity, even for commercial pur - poses, and the possibility to grant said rights to third parties (eg, videogame producers). Sometimes, federations put limits on the com - mercial exploitation of athletes’ images (con - nected, for instance, to images in the context of a national team), especially when federations’
technical sponsors are competitors of athletes’ technical sponsors. Athletes may take any necessary action to stop any abuse of their image, unless they lawfully express their consent to the commercial exploi - tation of their image by third parties. A noteworthy dispute recently involved fash - ion brand Dolce&Gabbana and Diego Armando Maradona, with the former sentenced by the Court of Milan to pay damages to the latter for unauthorised exploitation of his image for com - mercial purposes. 5.4 Licensing Licensing is a contract by which the licensor grants the exploitation of its IP to the licen - see in return for a fixed fee and/or royalties. It represents one of the most common ways for sportspeople to commercially exploit their IP and image (eg, through merchandise bearing the licensor’s logo). Clubs have the widest powers to leverage their licensing agreements using the image of the team, whereas licensing to a third party the image rights of a single athlete will be subject to the latter’s consent; similarly, whenever a club is willing to use and/or license the image of minor athletes, the consent of their parents/guardians is also required. 5.5 Sports Data Athletes’ Data Athletes’ biometric data is increasingly used for competitive and commercial purposes, subject to the athlete being informed and providing con - sent to the processing and usage of health data. In particular, professional teams usually collect athletes’ data through specific analytics soft - ware in order to implement tailor-made training
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