Manchester United Sues Sega over copyright infringement

Usually crossovers between traditional sports and video games or esports are exciting news. But this time, it isn’t such great news. Sega is under fire by Manchester United for using their logo in their game Football Manager. 

Both, Sega and Sports Interactive have been sued by the Premier League team. Sega published the game while Sports Interactive developed it. According to Guardian, Manchester United was unhappy with how Sega used the club’s name without their consent next to a generic logo. Manchester United claims that this “deprives the registered proprietor of its right to have the club crest licensed”. 

In a counter argument, Sega and SI’s attorney said that the logo was “one of 14 generic logo templates that is randomly chosen by the Football Manager game engine each time a new game is started” and “clearly indicates that the use of the Manchester United is not licensed by the claimant”. 

The Manchester United attorney also asked the Judge to allow them to modify or amend their claim, to include modding. He said that club to amend its claim against Sega and SI to include allegations involving “the practice of supplying ‘patches’ or ‘mods’, essentially downloadable files containing replica trademarks, which consumers then incorporate into the game”. 

 The attorney also argued that Sega and SI “encouraged” the use of patches supplied by third parties “by promoting the patch providers in various ways and, of course, they directly benefited from it by avoiding the need to take any licence and enjoying increased sales of their game”. 

Usually, sports Titles like FIFA and PES have the club names and player names licensed from the owners and stakeholders. But Football Manager has been using Generic player names and logos for decades now and this is the first time anyone has raised an objection.