Where, What, and How – Trademarks & the Olympic Games (Part 2)

Part 2: WHAT

Last month, we reviewed where the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) derives its trademark rights—if you missed last month’s article, catch up here: June 2024 Article. This month, we are exploring what trademarks the USOPC owns, based on the statutes and case law we discussed last month.

The USOPC and its holding company, United States Olympic and Paralympic Properties (USOPP), are very protective over its marks, and for good reason. As the USOPC argued in its complaint when suing Puma for trademark infringement in 2021, it “raises the money it needs to operate by, in large part, licensing use of its intellectual property to sponsors and licensees…these fees pay to house, feed, train, and otherwise support U.S. Olympic athletes, and finance this country’s participation in the Olympic Games.”

With this licensing structure in mind, we thought it would be interesting to look at the oldest U.S. registration owned by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee still live on the Register. And, unsurprisingly, the mark is OLYMPIC, Reg. No. 968566;  the application was submitted in January 1971, several years before the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act took effect. The mark was registered on September 18, 1973, and covered goods in (current) Classes 14, 16, 20, 21, 24, 26, and 35, and collective membership services. Over the years, most of these Classes have been deleted from the registration, to the point where the only goods currently covered by the original registration are “lapel pins” in Class 14 and “prints and publications, including pamphlets, newsletters, brochures, programs” in Class 16. In case you might worry that this means the USOPC’s protection of the word OLYMPIC is wearing thin, USPTO records indicate that through subsequent filings, the USOPC owns nearly 30 other U.S. applications and registrations that include the word OLYMPIC—they seem well-covered.

The USOPC has created a very useful five-page summary of its trademark portfolio, which can be found here: USOPP Intellectual Property. The marks fall under a few categories—slogans used by the USOPC, ways to identify athletes competing in the Olympic Games, location-based marks that include the name of the city where the Games are being held, and various stylized marks. If you are looking to license any of the USOPC’s marks, this page on their website appears to include all of the information you need: USOPC Commercial Use Guidelines.

Remember that under the broad trademark rights held by the USOPC, a likelihood of confusion between the USOPC and an accused infringer’s use of the mark does not to be proven for infringement to be found, so tread carefully!

This article appeared in the July 2024 issue of MarkIt to Market®. To view our past issues, as well as other firm newsletters, please click here.