The football star Ronaldo is suing a Chinese medicine company which allegedly used a hastily shot photograph of him to advertise throat lozenges, reports said today.According to a series of Chinese papers, the Brazilian striker innocently posed holding a packet of Golden Throat Lozenges at a dinner in Beijing in September 2003 when he and his Real Madrid team-mates were touring China. Ronaldo's representatives said the picture was then used by the Guangxi Golden Throat Group without permission for a television commercial broadcast nationally.
According to the China Daily newspaper, the footballer, who is on the verge of leaving Real Madrid for Milan, only found out about the advertisement when he was approached by another Chinese company to front an advertising campaign, on the condition he terminate his arrangement with Golden Throat. The paper said the illegal campaign had caused Ronaldo to miss out on seven other potential million pound-plus deals to endorse Chinese products.
The China Daily printed a still picture from the offending advertisement. It shows a grinning Ronaldo wearing a yellow football shirt bearing the drug company's name in Chinese characters and holding up a packet of the lozenges.
The paper said the company, based in the south-western Chinese region of Guangxi, insisted it had permission to use the image, which remained prominently on its website today.
According to a series of reports, local lawyers have been hired to collect evidence, with Ronaldo expected to begin legal action next month. Piracy and the illegal use of copyrighted images and brands remain rampant in China - figures from 2004 showed that 90% of computer software used in the country was illegal - despite increasing international pressure for reform, especially after Beijing joined the World Trade Organisation five years ago.
At the same time, football is hugely popular in the country and players regularly star in advertisements. When the Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic achieved massive popularity by guiding the Chinese team to their first ever World Cup finals in 2002, he made millions of pounds fronting advertisements for everything from air conditioners to rice wine.
