Olympic IP: Sporting trademarks from a Swedish perspective

The ‘Björn Borg’ trademark is registered in over 30 countries and regions—but Borg has no rights. Petter Rindforth of Fenix Legal examines the pain behind a sportsman's IP 'mistake'. 

The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games have just ended. With 360,000 hours of television broadcast and billions of viewers worldwide, it is a perfect place to explore your trademarks and get new customers. The 10,500 athletes are also, of course, registered or not, trademarks for themselves, the clothes they wear, the sporting goods they use, and the countries they represent.

And with that, the bad guys also see a business opportunity. According to the EU Intellectual Property Office’s (EUIPO) IP 2023 perception study, based on 25,824 interviews conducted between January 30, 2023 and February 15, 2023 with residents in all EU member states, 12% of EU citizens access or stream sports content from illegal online sources, while fake sports equipment costs manufacturers €850 million ($945 million) per year.

According to the EUIPO’s Intellectual Property and Youth Scoreboard, 10% of EU youths aged 15​​–24 admit to purchasing fake sporting equipment intentionally.

Unfortunately, Sweden is among the top ten most affected countries when it comes to annual lost sales from counterfeit sports equipment, being in seventh place with a value of €30.8 million (compared to the number one country France, which saw lost sales of €143.3 million).

Research shows that 14% of Swedes access or stream content from illegal online sources for sports viewing, and the figure rises to 33% among youths aged 15–24.

Additionally, 9% of Swedish youths in this age group have knowingly bought counterfeit sports equipment online.

The European Commission has adopted two recommendations for the member states, EU organisations and authorities to cooperate: the Commission Recommendation of May 4, 2023 on combating online piracy of sports and other live events; and the Recommendation to combat counterfeiting, both offline and online.

Some of the key actions proposed by the Commission are: adapting procedures to tackle new counterfeiting practices; optimising information sharing in court proceedings; and ensuring appropriate compensation for damages, including both material and moral damages. It also suggests promoting the use of alternative dispute resolution for all IP disputes (mediation), as well as developing practices aimed at faster, cheaper, and more ecological storage and disposal of counterfeits.

Defensive moves by football clubs

The traditional trademarks of athletes are their names, or accepted nicknames. A basic protection in Sweden is the Act (1978:800) on Names and Images in Advertising (the Names Act). The Act gives fundamental protection against commercial use of an individual’s name or picture in marketing without the explicit permission of the individual. Anyone who intentionally or with gross negligence violates the Names Act may be liable to a fine, and the suffering person is entitled to reasonable compensation for the infringement.

The Swedish Football Association (Svenska Fotbollförbundet) has produced a template for warning letters that affected football clubs can send out to infringers. The problem is that if the infringer does not reply (which unfortunately is the usual result), the football clubs normally do not have a sufficient budget to proceed with legal actions.

The best solution is therefore to register the trademark, and then create clear legal guidelines of use.

One example is the Swedish football club AIK. The letters A, I, K stands for Allmänna Idrottsklubben (The General Sports Club), which was founded in 1891. It has protected its trademark in different versions in the EU as well as the UK, and for all kinds of goods and services that are of interest. ‘Allmänna Idrottsklubben’ is European Union trademark number 018221455, ‘AIK’ is EUTM number 018221454, and its figurative/logo is also registered in three different forms. AIK Fotball’s graphical guidelines state that:

“AIK’s club mark is trademark protected and may not be used without AIK’s permission. However, it is permitted to use the AIK trademark in obituaries if it is not distorted in any way. For questions regarding the club trademark, tips on trademark infringement, etc send an email to info@aik.se, if permission is approved, AIK’s graphic guidelines below must be followed…” The visual guideline is 120 pages, with clear details and pictures.

Another well-known Swedish football club, Djurgårdens IF (DIF) has decided to register trademarks not related to its official name, but to specific services: Swedish national trademark numbers 550710 ‘Urban Sports’, 550709 ‘Urban Hockey’, and 551424 ‘Ishockey för alla’ (ice hockey for everyone), all for ‘entertainment; cultural activities’ in class 41.

Finding the winning strategy

When it comes to individuals, the trademark policy and protection differs, depending on the person and surrounding advisors.

Swedish alpine skier Anja Pärsson, the woman who has won the most individual alpine Olympic and World Cup medals (17) of all time, is one example. She ended her skiing career in 2012. In 2002 she filed an EU trademark for her name ‘Anja Pärsson’, which was registered in 2004 (number 002879187) for goods and services in classes 3, 25, 28, 31 and 41. For some reason, the trademark was not renewed on September 24, 2022 and has expired.

The same nonuse of trademark is seen with the Swedish former World Cup alpine ski racer Ingemar Stenmark. He is well known with 86 victories in the World Cup, and one Olympic gold. However, he has not registered ‘Stenmark’ as a trademark. Instead, he collaborates with Swedish company Spektrum, which sells ‘classic and high-performance glasses’ by referring to Stenmark as a customer and co-operative business partner.

A more positive example is the Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimović. Via his company, with the not entirely true-to-life name Unknown AB, he is the owner of the word trademarks ‘Zlatan’ and ‘Zlatan Ibrahimovic’, registered in the EU (numbers 008209124 and 008235111) and UK for goods and services in classes 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 25 and 41. The trademark ‘Zlatan Ibrahimovic’ is also registered in Turkey, however only for class 3 goods.

The ‘Zlatan Ibrahimovic’ trademark has a good reputation in Sweden, and one reason is that Ibrahimović himself is still active in the sport, and owns the registration with full knowledge of the importance of goodwill.

That is not the case with the ‘Björn Borg’ trademark. Björn Borg is a Swedish former No 1 tennis player, with 11 Grand Slam singles titles. In 1989, Anders Arnborger and Louise Hildebeck started the company World Brand Management—which then changed name to Björn Borg—for producing and selling ‘Björn Borg’ clothing. The tennis player himself was initially actively involved in the marketing of the goods trademarked ‘Björn Borg’. However, in 2007, Borg sold his trademark to the company for 124 million SEK (€10.8 million). The agreement included a paragraph that gave Borg an extra payment based on 1.5–2% on the sales during the years 2007–2016.

Today, the ‘Björn Borg’trademark is registered in over 30 countries and regions around the world, but Borg has no rights. He has reflected in several interviews on what happened in 2007. “I don’t know what flew into me. Perhaps it was a bit of premature spring cleaning. It was a stupid decision to sell the trademark.”

To summarise: register your trademark, and keep it valid in your name. Which is exactly what Sveriges Olympiska Kommitté (Sweden’s Olympic Committee) has done. In 1996 it registered the trademark number 336393 ‘Olympic’ (word) for all goods and services in classes 1–42.

Petter Rindforth is managing partner at Fenix Legal. He can be contacted at info@fenixlegal.eu.