Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1181922
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 NOVEMBER 2019 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA THE original writer of TV soap opera Fattigi registered a se- ries of trademarks, which the show's producer Pierre Portelli is insisting was carried out abu- sively. Portelli, a broadcaster who until his recent resignation was PN leader Adrian Delia's head of media, accused writer and actor Sandro Vella of register- ing trademarks for episodes of his Watermelon Media soap opera Fattigi. In a judicial protest, Portelli has asked a court to instruct Vella to renounce to his six reg- istered trademarks on episodes of Fattigi, which he claims were taken out in bad faith, and pay damages incurred by the pro- duction company and Net TV's Media.Link Communications. Portelli also wants the court to instruct Facebook to take down Vella's Facebook page for Fattigi, which he claimed in his favour after registering the trademarks. Vella had been enrolled by Portelli in April 2017 to script episodes for Fattigi, after hold- ing a series of meetings in which characters and plot were discussed, as well as discus- sions with actors and crew on the show. But Vella resigned the production after scripting just two episodes of the pro- posed 26. However, Portelli added that over a year after leaving the production, in September 2018, Vella managed to regis- ter six trademarks on the name 'Fattigi'. Portelli said he had previously attempted to call on Vella not to persist with the trademark registration, and claims Vella acquiesced to the request, with the first season of Fat- tigi finally being broadcast by Media.Link Communications. But Vella did not relinquish the registration, and indeed by September 2018 he became the owner of the Fattigi trademark. Portelli said that this has cost his production company es- sential exposure on social me- dia. "We were advertising the second season of Fattigi on Facebook, but it turns out that Vella wrote to Facebook and informed them that since he is the registered trademark own- er of Fattigi, then Facebook has to stop the programme's pro- motion." This led to Facebook remov- ing Watermelon Media's of- ficial Fattigi page, putting the programme out of reach of some 20,000 Facebook fol- lowers. Portelli also said Vella had told Facebook to warn his company, Media.Link and Net TV from promoting Fattigi on pain of losing their social me- dia pages. "This malicious use of trade- marks took place in bad faith, and has led to Watermelon and Media.Link to suffer losses of thousands of euros in advertis- ing without its Facebook expo- sure. Media.Link alone spent €20,000 on a digital platform to stream these programmes on- line and now cannot share the link to Netondemand.mt on Facebook, Messenger, or Insta- gram," Portelli said. The Fattigi feud between Por- telli and Vella degenerated into a veritable soap opera when the former wife of PN leader Adrian Delia, Nickie Vella de Fremeaux, took Vella's side and gave him legal advice on his troubles with her husband's political ally. Portelli accused Vella de Fre- meaux of having been "weap- onised" against the Nationalist Party after she took sides in the intellectual property claim. Vella had filed a court appli- cation claiming his intellec- tual property was stolen. When Vella de Fremeaux took to Fa- cebook in an emotional appeal to both parties while claiming that Vella had been robbed, Portelli accused her of having been "weaponised" against him and Media.Link and "against decent case and crew, and ul- timately against the party your husband leads." Portelli takes Fattigi's trademark feud to court over Facebook ban Producer Pierre Portelli says former writer has registered Fattigi trademark to kill Facebook promotion Writer Sandro Vella's (inset) ownership of the Fattigi trademarks has allowed him to get Facebook to prevent Pierre Portelli (top) from promoting his soap opera on Facebook