In the business of football, merchandising is an important source of income for the more, but also less famous clubs. Merchandising is estimated to be worth £40 million a year to Manchester United, £15 million to Liverpool and £ 5 million to Arsenal. Street traders have long been able to sell their own merchandise containing the clubs logos and players names and images, costing the clubs millions of pounds on lost revenues.

But now there has come an end to these losses. Arsenal Football club has won a European Court battle to stop a street trader using the club's logo without its permission. This landmark ruling has major implications for sport clubs, directly affecting sales of memorabilia and other merchandise. 

Arsenal claimed that because it had registered its "canon" logo and the Arsenal FC crest as trademarks in respect of clothing it had an exclusive right to the use of these marks and that street traders could not sell products with these marks on them without their explicit prior permission. The question before the European Court was: should a big football club or pop star or any other famous figure have a monoploy over selling goods or services with their name or logo on it provided they have succeeded in registering it as a trademark?

Keenly watched by other famous football clubs, which make hundreds of millions of pounds each year selling scarfs, hats, stickers and other items, the European Court of Justice ruled that trademark owners must be able to prevent the use of trademarks by "third parties".

A big dutch football club did just that. With the help of the information provided by Pretection this club was able to close down a website of a street vendor offering products bearing the logo of this famous club. Pretection provided all information on the owner of the website and the street vendor. This was just one case. but Pretection's monitoring service can provide a full time worldwide search for websites that infringe of the logo of the football club. All data about these websites is offered in a comprehensive report making it possible to take these sites of the Internet and street vendors of the street.