FIFA's Patent Battle in Brazil: Infringement Confirmed, Damages Partially Overturned
Brazilian courts confirmed FIFA infringed a Brazilian inventor's patent for the referee spray, but the Supreme Court later overturned the damages award. Here's what actually happened, and why FIFA kept using the spray anyway.
Laila dos Reis Araujo
5/25/20242 min read
At some point, a spray started to be used in soccer mainly to help referees organize players during free kicks. It is something very helpful and seemingly simple, so why didn't anyone think of it before?
This is often how patents arise. Someone identifies a problem and devises an innovative solution. This happened when a Brazilian inventor created the spray for soccer. He developed the product and protected it through a patent application in Brazil, number PI 0002743-0. The patent was also extended to several other countries.
Since 2017, the Brazilian company has been disputing with FIFA over the unauthorized use of its patent. The owner also demanded that the spray not be used without authorization; however, it was used at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
In 2021, the inventor achieved his first victory. The Brazilian Court of Appeal recognized FIFA's infringement and ordered compensation for the use of the spray. As a defense strategy, FIFA initiated a lawsuit to challenge the validity of the patent, arguing that it lacked inventive activity and should not have been granted.
The Brazilian court upheld the patent, with the judge affirming that it met the necessary requirements. Thus, the patent remained valid.
In 2024, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) upheld a ruling against FIFA for acting in bad faith during the negotiations, pointing to the transfer of expertise and technology from Spuni to FIFA, years of unauthorized use, and FIFA's failure to follow through on a promised purchase of the patent after benefiting from the inventor's know-how.
FIFA appealed once more, this time to the Supreme Federal Court (STF). In February 2026, the STF kept the core findings intact: Allemagne's status as the inventor, the patent infringement, and the bad faith in FIFA's pre-contractual dealings all remained confirmed. What the STF overturned was narrower: the specific portion of the award tied to FIFA's decision to conceal the Spuni brand during the 2014 World Cup. Justice Gilmar Mendes ruled that lower courts could not disregard Brazil's General World Cup Law (Law No. 12,663/2012), which gave FIFA the right to choose which brands would be displayed at the event. The case was sent back for further review specifically on whether that law applies to this dispute, while the rest of the judgment, including the underlying finding of patent infringement and bad faith, stands.
This distinction matters. FIFA did not win on the merits of the case. It secured a narrower, technical victory on one specific component of the damages, tied to event-specific legislation rather than to any question about the patent's validity or FIFA's conduct during the broader negotiation.
This case remains one of the most closely watched intellectual property disputes in world sports, not because the outcome was simple, but because it shows how a single dispute can produce different outcomes for different legal questions within the same judgment. The patent's validity was tested and upheld more than once, in more than one court. Bad faith was found and largely confirmed on appeal. Yet one narrow piece of the damages award, tied to a separate law passed specifically for a single tournament, was carved out and sent back for further analysis. For companies and inventors holding patents that may intersect with major events or specific regulatory frameworks in Brazil, this case is a reminder that a ruling rarely settles every question at once, and that event-specific legislation can shape the outcome in ways that have nothing to do with the underlying merits of the IP claim itself.
