Remember the story yesterday about Paris Saint-Germain players receiving 24k gold iPhone cases commemorating their Ligue 1 championship? Well, the news apparently didn’t sit well with the club and they’re threatening to take action against the British company that’s making them.
PSG sent a statement to Le Parisien and it reads:
“Paris Saint-Germain is in no way associated with the company iDesign Gold. This company usurps our name to advertise itself by pretending that we would have used its services to produce gold phone cases for Paris Saint-Germain players. This information is completely false and misleading and illustrates practices foreign to the values carried by Paris Saint-Germain.”
There’s no doubt the post on Instagram from iDesign Gold is misleading. In the caption, they write, “…we are delighted to present the launch of our new updated website and our new custom iDesign Gold phone cases, starting with our collaboration in gifting cases to the PSG team.” That word “collaboration” is likely what upset the Ligue 1 champions.
“We will take all the necessary measures so that the iDesign Gold company ceases to use the image and the official attributes of Paris Saint-Germain,” the statement concludes.
Looking at the design, I don’t see any official attributes of PSG (and I only count 8 stars instead of nine for the number of Ligue 1 titles the club has won). I see the Ligue 1 logo and the names of players, but there isn’t a PSG logo or anything else that I would say is copyrighted by the club.
What makes this situation slightly more awkward is the fact that Kylian Mbappé, Neymar Jr., and Thiago Silva are featured on the iDesign Gold homepage. Those players may be customers or have an endorsement deal but it’s clear that PSG has no deal with the company whatsoever.
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