You can't spell Olympics without IP

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The International Olympic Committee has developed a reputation over the years for stringently enforcing its trademarks during the summer games. It has good reason to, with brands like Coca-Cola and Visa paying top dollar for exclusive sponsorship rights. Today on the show, the lengths the IOC will go to protect its trademarks and how smaller brands try to avoid their dragnet.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR. This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma.
0:14.4	And I'm Whelan Wong. So for all you romantic comedy fans out there, here is a Meet-Cute.
0:20.4	Imagine it is the 2024 Olympics.
0:23.0	Okay, that's not too hard to do.
0:25.0	Zek is a hundred meter sprinter for team Great Britain.
0:29.0	He bumps into a beautiful woman named Olivia who has come to the Olympics for a dream internship.
0:35.3	And if you're thinking I didn't hear about this budding Olympic romance on NBC this week
0:41.5	well you'd be right because this is actually a fictional story.
0:45.0	It's the premise for a book that came out last month called Let the Games
0:49.2	Begin. Zeke and Olivia are characters invented by debut novelist Rufaro Faith Maserura.
0:55.0	They don't like each other at the beginning but over the cause of the book and over the
0:58.8	cause of the summer and the Olympics they start to fall for each other and
1:02.2	navigate their little core life crises together.
1:05.0	Rufaro let her imagination run free for her novel.
1:08.0	She designed her own opening ceremony and described raucous athlete parties in the Olympic village.
1:14.0	But Rifaro had to be careful about using the word Olympics
1:18.0	when it came to promoting her book.
1:20.0	And there's no Olympic flag or rings on the cover either.
1:23.2	That's because these words and symbols
1:25.0	are the legal property of the International Olympic Committee.
1:28.5	We couldn't use the rings because they don't belong to me.
1:31.4	Rifaro says she was never that worried that the International Olympic Committee would come after
	...

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