Earlier this week, a man has filed a lawsuit against soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo over a name his fans had used to call him. The Real Madrid star, who has been named in the complaint filed in US District Court in Providence along Danish company JBS Textile Group, was sought legal action by Christopher Renzi after JBS had threatened the plaintiff with aggressive action and petitioned to cancel the plaintiff's trademark, Renzi's lawyer told SFGate.
It has been made known that Renzi applied for the trademark rights to "CR7," which evidently is Ronaldo's first and last initials and his jersey number combined, with the US Patent and Trademark Office back in 2008. His application was later granted in 2009, and had been using it for his own clothing and exercise program business, attorney Michael Feldhuhn had said. The "CR7" phrase for SFGate is a combination of the plaintiff's own initials and the date when he was born, which is October 7.
"The other side says he is trying to trade on Ronaldo's fame, and there's really nothing to that. I knew who Ronaldo was, and I didn't think of CR7 as some kind of famous trademark," Feldhuhn said.
Feldhuhn told the news outlet that the Europe-based textile company had offered his client compensation to stop using the trademark he first secured with USPTO. Although the lawyer declined to discuss details about the compensation, he did provided a hint that it was "very small."
There has been no feedback nor reports coming from Ronaldo's camp about the lawsuit. JBS Textile's lawyer, Eric Fingerhut, has also refused to comment on the case.
JBS Textile has been selling underwear and socks under the "CR7" name for men and boys in Europe, SFGate said.
Should the court allows the lawsuit to proceed, it shouldn't be a problem for the Real Madrid star to hire powerful representation for the case. Now at number 30 in the Top 100 Celebrity Top Earners, the Portuguese player has earned $80 million as of June this year, according to Forbes.
