With Jude Bellingham now officially the world’s best footballer by the only metric that matters, England go into Euro 2024 as arguably the favourites for the tournament. As ever, the nation’s hopes ride with the Three Lions, and absolutely nothing could possibly dampen football fever this summer.
Oh wait – I forgot about VAR.
For the uninitiated, VAR, or video assistant referee, is a match official in a football game who reviews the decisions of the on-field referee using video footage. Its implementation into elite football matches has been wildly successful. Given the success of the technology, UEFA are anticipating using VAR throughout the tournament.
All sporting events require drama, however; step forth Ballinno B.V., proprietors of European patent EP1944067, alleging that UEFA’s preferred VAR provider, Kinexon GmbH, infringe EP’067.
Ballinno sought a preliminary injunction at the Unified Patent Court, Hamburg Local Division against the use of VAR at Euro 2024 on these grounds. True heroes attempting to ensure that the beautiful game is not corrupted by officiating mishaps? Unlikely, Ballinno are a non-practising entity, and this looks to be a case of fairly cynical timing on Ballinno’s part to extract a settlement from UEFA to avoid tournament disruption.
Is there merit to the case?
Claim 1 of EP’067 recites as follows
- Method for detecting a contact with a ball by a first player in games and sports, the method comprising:
– sensing a sound signal produced by the ball (Ba);
– processing the sound signal in order to determine whether there is a contact with the ball by the first player, wherein the processing includes comparing the sensed signal with a predetermined signal, which predetermined signal is the signal of a contact with the ball by a player;
– if the processing determines that the ball is contacted by the first player, generating a detection signal;
– supplying the detection signal to a signaling system; and
– generating by the signaling system an observable signal to be observed by a referee, in response to receipt of the detection signal.
Now, whilst I am delighted to find that the French for offside is hors-jeu, my understanding of the rule itself is limited to the “Welcome to Wrexham” explanation. I do know, however, that it’s important to determine when the ball is struck by the passing player so as to calculate the time at which to check for the position of the player who may be in the offside position. By that logic, it seems pretty clear cut that claim 1 reads onto any VAR technology.
That said, if you boil the claim down, what you’ve got is ‘using a sound signal to work out if a ball is kicked’ and ‘sending something based on the signal to a video referee’. That seems pretty light on inventive step to my uneducated mind. UEFA would seem to agree; a revocation action has been filed against EP’067 at the UPC.
In the meantime, football fans, fear not. The UPC rejected Ballinno’s application for the preliminary injunction on 3 June 2024. We can get back to watching sport as it was meant to be played.
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