Major sporting events like the Olympic Games see a lot of people craving for fan T-shirts. This puts you in a position to draw on untapped opportunities to provide sports fans with tees sporting athletic designs. It’s no legal picnic, though. Find out what it takes to keep the legal dogs off your heals, and get your designs off the starting blocks by eliminating the hazards of tripping.
The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro take place between 5–21 August, and they pose a very copy-protected challenge to designers. Unlicensed providers of merchandise are well advised to remember the old Olympic creed “the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle.”
To help your struggles come to fruition, we’d like to furnish you with inspiring ideas to have your share in the bonanza. But first, please take a good look at the images and word marks that shouldn’t be infringed at all cost.
Don’t use official Olympic / Paralympic logos
It should go without saying that you are not allowed to use any of these images.
Don’t alter or imitate any of the official images
In the past, some designs depicting alterations of trademark images were uploaded much to the chagrin of the IOC. Please take these designs as an example of what you should not try to publish:
Don’t use ‘official language’
Similar to the infringement of image rights, using words and phrases subject to trademarks (word marks) are an absolute no go. Avoid using or illustrating any of these:
“Olympic”, “Olympiad”, “Olympic Games”, “Paralympic”, “Paralympiad”, “Paralympic Games”, “Olympic Games”, “Rio 2016” and “Olympic and “Paralympic Games”.
Take another look at this blog article to get an in depth impression of how to be careful and what you can do to work your way around it.
Concentrate on forms of sport
Focus on designs reflecting the sports popular in the countries of your sales markets. In the Europe and the UK, these are the top 10 most popular Olympic sports:
- Swimming
- Track & field
- Volleyball
- Cycling
- Tennis
- Basketball
- Table Tennis
- Gymnastics
- Badminton
- Hockey
This map is also quite interesting to see the most popular sport per country.
What else can I do?
If you are passionate about any kind of sport, and you feel like Spreadshirt’s Marketplace could do with some fresh designs of new Olympic disciplines such as kitesurfing, this could be your time to shine. Have a look at this football article to get your creative juices flowing for the love of kitesurfing, karate or whatever else rocks your kitchen sink.
Not only the official Olympic logos and word marks have copyrights. Logos and brands of sponsors, partners and other third parties like e.g. adidas, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Continental, McDonalds and Turkish Airlines will receive a lot of legal attention before and during the Olympics.
You can check up on trademarks with e.g. the UK Intellectual Property Office, the EU Intellectual Property Office, the WIPO page or TMview. The latter offers a flexible filter option to look for special license holders (in this case Olympics) or categories (called nice class, here item 25 for clothing).
