Battle for Olympic founder’s name
A DUTCH branding company, a global sports organization and the name of a French aristocrat who has been dead for 80 years might not seem like the ingredients for a high-stakes legal battle.
But the showdown between Tempting Brands and the International Olympic Committee over the right to commercialize the name Pierre de Coubertin — the founder of the modern Olympic Games — could prove to be worth millions of dollars.
In 2007, the IOC secured “word mark” protection for the name “Coubertin” from the European Union Intellectual Property Office.
The IOC’s goal was to block anyone else from trading off a legacy it considered inseparable from the Olympic movement.
But Tempting Brands, which has a history of scooping up an eclectic mix of marketing rights, argued that in accordance with EU rules the IOC had lost its hold on the Coubertin mark because it had failed to use it for five years.
The company then moved to secure trademark protection for the Coubertin name in 60 countries.
Tempting Brand’s trademark stock already includes the iconic US Route 66 — once the main highway used to explore the American West that was immortalized in Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road” as well as the classic song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”
Coubertin, a historian and academic who believed sport has a vital role to play in a healthy society, founded the IOC in 1894 in Paris before relocating the organization to its current home in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1915.
The IOC is now suing Tempting Brands to protect its founder’s heritage from being “tarnished by the possible sale of products under a ‘Pierre de Coubertin’ mark and be wrongly associated with a business venture of a company that is totally unrelated to the Olympic Movement,” the spokesman said.
For now, the Coubertin family is staying clear of the fight and “letting the IOC manage the situation,” said Jacques de Navacelle de Coubertin, a descendent.
But, “in a case where our family’s name is actually being used without our consent, our family would intervene to defend its reputation.”
French lawyer Fabienne Fajgenbaum, an intellectual property specialist, noted that while Tempting Brands may have cleverly pounced on the Coubertin brand it had engaged in a “fraudulent filing” that is ripe for a challenge since Tempting Brands has simply laid siege to the Coubertin name just to rent it out.
But a straightforward legal win for the IOC may be unlikely partly given the various jurisdictions involved, according to Dutch intellectual property lawyer Tjeerd Overdijk.