Dutch supermarket ordered to pay Max Verstappen €150,000 in damages
A Dutch online supermarket has been ordered to pay Max Verstappen €150,000 for using a lookalike of the Formula 1 driver in one of their videos
In 2016 Picnic put a video online that was meant as a funny take on a commercial Verstappen made for his personal sponsor Jumbo, a big supermarket chain in the Netherlands.
Verstappen's management demanded that the video was taken down immediately, and although Picnic quickly complied to this request, a court case was launched with Verstappen asking for €400,000 in damages.
The court ruled that Picnic needs to pay Verstappen €150,000 for a breach of personality rights, which Verstappen was satisfied with as the outcome.
"Yeah, of course", Verstappen said when asked wether he was happy with the verdict. "It's nice in general because you can't just use your image rights like that.
"They tried to make it look like it was funny but it was definitely not well thought about and to make a profit and to make their brand bigger.
"But I have my own sponsors which make a deal with me to be able to use me as well, so I think it's quite normal that if something like that happens, you go against it.
"It's also for future things that can happen, you need to show them that they can't just do that."
A statement of Picnic read: "Our Facebook video was meant as a joke and its sole purpose was to motivate our staff.
"As soon as we heard Max didn't like it, we took the video offline.
"We find it hard to believe that Max has suffered damage of such a big sum of money."
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