Sarko and Bruni take Ryanair for €60k
PrintCourt awards damages over cut-price ticket ad
Posted in Bootnotes, 5th February 2008 15:25 GMT
Free whitepaper – Total cost of ownership of Dell, HP and IBM blade solutions
A French court has ordered Ryanair to pay Nicolas Sarkozy and missus Carla Bruni €60,001 in damages for the unauthorised use of a lovely snap of the couple in one of its cheap-fare ad campaigns.
The advert in question (see pic) showed a fragrant pre-nuptials Bruni mulling that with Ryanair's unbeatable cut-price tickets, "all my family can come to the wedding".
This didn't go down at all well with the royal pair, who promptly sought redress in the courts. Sarko pitched for a symbolic €1, while his other half demanded €500,000, based on the fact that this was "the average cost for using her image for visual advertising on French territory".
In the end, Sarko got his one euro of flesh, and Bruni will have to settle for the remaining €60k.
Ryanair has not yet commented on the judgement, the Guardian notes, although it did last week apologise for the outrage and promised not to run the ad again. It also offered to stump €5,000 to the charity of Sarkozy's choice "as a token of its regret". ®
The Register Agile Data Center Summit
What Exchange can't do - and Dell can
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter