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Olympic Games

Olympics 2024: Mascots, money, marketing

The Olympic Games are the biggest sporting event in the world - more precisely: the Summer Olympics. Every four years, athletes from all over the world come together for prestigious competitions. On 26 July 2024, it will be time again: the 33rd Olympics of the modern era (since 1896) will begin in Paris.

10,500 athletes from 204 nations have qualified. They will be competing for a total of 329 gold medals until 11 August, 48 of which will be in athletics and 35 in swimming alone. 32 sports with numerous sub-disciplines have been admitted to the 33rd Olympic Games.

Paris triple

Paris is hosting the Olympics again for the first time in a hundred years and thus for the third time in total after 1900 and 1924. This makes the French capital the only city besides London to have hosted the Summer Olympics three times in modern times (in ancient times, in whose tradition the competitions see themselves, the Games were always held in Olympia on the Greek peninsula of Peloponnese). Los Angeles will also host the event for the third time in 2028.

Of course, there is also a lot of money involved in such major events today, for example from TV rights, advertising and merchandising. IP rights therefore also play a major role around the Olympics. It goes without saying that the rights holder and organiser of the Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), registered the logo, poster and mascot of the Paris Games as trademarks at an early stage.

However, this was not always the case in the past: it was not until 2012 that the IOC secured the trademark rights to the posters of previous Olympic Games dating back to 1912 (see picture gallery). The increasing commercialisation is a development of the last few decades.

Laws to protect the IOC's trade marks

Some countries passed laws specially to protect the IOC's brands. In Germany, for example, the Olympic Protection Act came into force on 31 March 2004. According to this law, the words "Olympiad", "Olympia" and "Olympic", either alone or in combination, as well as the Olympic symbol with the five intertwined rings, may not be used to identify goods and services, in advertising, as a company name or as a club badge or on a club flag. Trade mark applications that violate this provision must be rejected pursuant to Section 8 (2) No. 13 MarkenG due to a statutory prohibition of use. If they are nevertheless used, the National Olympic Committee (NOC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have a claim for injunctive relief and can demand compensation.

Since the law came into force, only very few trade marks with the element Olympia have been registered in Germany and then mostly with the consent of the NOC. Currently, 31 Olympic trade marks are still registered in the German trade mark register, although there were once over 100 in total. Historically, the term Olympia was attractive as a trade mark. The oldest application dates from 1896, the oldest still valid trade mark from 1897 (No 35389).

Olympia is still protected for Opel Automobile GmbH, the first Opel Olympia was sold as early as 1935, production was discontinued in 1953 (IR158935)., but even later there were special models of the "Rekord" and the "Kadett" under the name Olympia. At times, every second typewriter produced in Germany was sold under the Olympia brand, although the ownership of the Olympia factories and the brand changed frequently.

As the IOC itself is not bound by the restrictions of the Olympic Protection Act, it can apply for and obtain trade mark protection for Olympic names. For the Games in Paris, for example, it has extended the trade mark IR1527944 with a basic registration in Switzerland to many countries around the world, including the European Union. With the extension of protection to the Union, this trade mark also has protection in Germany.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation currently has 238 trademarks registered internationally for the IOC. The basic registration takes place in Switzerland, where the IOC also has its headquarters. These include prophylactically registered trade marks for candidate cities that were ultimately not awarded the Games (e.g. Munich 2018).

In the beginning there was Waldi

This also includes the mascots of the respective games. The first official mascot was the 1972 dachshund "Waldi", the symbolic animal of the Munich Games. "Schuss" had previously been created for the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, but was not officially declared a mascot by the IOC. Otl Aicher's Waldi set a standard that hardly any later mascot could match (see picture gallery).

The current mascot for Paris 2024, a shapeless red something, is reminiscent of the so-called Phrygian bonnets, also known as Jacobin caps. They were a symbol of the French Revolution in 1789, and today also of the Republic; France's national figure "Marianne" also wears one. The ugliest mascot yet? Take a look at our picture gallery…

Pictures: DPMAregister

Last updated: 25 July 2024