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Boy named Rooney Scholes denied chocolate easter egg due to potential copyright violation

(Twitter/@itvnews)

The mother of a three-year-old boy named Rooney Scholes ran into trouble this week when a chocolatier refused to write his first name on a chocolate Easter egg through fear of Wayne Rooney suing for breach of copyright.

Let's all just bask in the ridiculousness of that sentence for a moment before continuing.

Life-long Manchester United fan Jo-anne Scholes — who has cats named Cantona and Berbatov and a 16-year-old boy coincidentally named Anderson — has spoken to the press after the Thorntons chocolate store in Bury refused to write "Rooney" on an egg in chocolate icing. This is due to the fact that many superstar footballers globally trademark their names to avoid being associated with unofficial merchandise,  but also to disappoint small children on religious holidays.

The Manchester Evening News reports:

The mum-of-four said: “It’s just pathetic that they wouldn’t let a child have his name on an Easter egg for fear of upsetting Wayne Rooney. I can’t imagine Wayne Rooney would care less.

“It’s just nonsense anyway. Rooney is his name, does that mean he’s not allowed to have his name on anything because he shares it with a famous footballer?

As a compromise, the Thorntons shop worker wrote the youngster's full name "Rooney Scholes" on the egg. This overly cautious attempt to circumvent a copyright violation fails to recognize the fact that the egg now has the name of two Manchester United legends on it, thus doubling the chances of chocolate-based litigation.

Even though there is actually no provision in UK copyright law to protect people's names and this whole story is utterly ridiculous, DT understands that Paul Scholes is preparing to "lawyer up" and sue for the egg. Although he'll probably settle out of court for half of it. He's not greedy.

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Ryan Bailey

is a writer for Dirty Tackle on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!