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news
bike polo (CClicensed by tink20seven via Flickr)Ralph Lauren takes London's Chunk clothing company to European court in bike polo trademark row
Multinational designer clothing and fragrance company Ralph Lauren is taking a London clothing company to the European Court of Justice to prevent it from registering a logo featuring a bike polo player.
Ralph Lauren says Chunk Clothing’s logo, which depicts a bike rider swinging a polo mallet, is too similar to its own famous mallet-wielding horse rider.
But according to Kiran Randhawa in the Evening Standard Ralph Lauren lost an appeal earlier this year that aimed to prevent Chunk registering the trademark.
The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market had decided to grant Chunk’s request to register its bike-rider logo and when Ralph Lauren appealed, the decision went against it and it was ordered to pay €850 (£716) of Chunk’s costs.
The Ralph Lauren Polo logo
Chunk has spent £50,000 on the dispute with Ralph Lauren so far and has been trying to register the trademark for four years. Trevor Callaghan, Chunk's director of finance, said: “[The process] seems to be loaded in favour of the big corporates. They have big pockets.”
The Chunk Clothing logo
It’s not the first time Ralph Lauren has attempted to defend itself against visuals it deems too similar to its own. In 2011 a US federal judge ruled that the the U.S. Polo Association could not use its logo, which shows two horseback polo riders, one swinging a mallet through the air, for a fragrance.
The USPA claimed that Ralph Lauren was “attempting to monopolize the depiction of the sport of polo”. But the court found that the combination of the dual rider logo, the word polo and a perfume bottle could cause “customer confusion”.
Islington-based Chunk sponsors a London bike polo team and supported the 2009 European championships in Geneva and the 2010 world’s in Berlin.
The resurgence of all things urban and cycling in the last few years has included a boom in bike polo. A London league, the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association, was founded in 2009 and is working toward the creation of a UK-wide body.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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41 comments
Hmmm, there's a few people confusing copyright and trademark law here. They're two separate things with two separate sets of objectives and requirements.
Trademark exists to prevent customer confusion, as both of these products are the same thing (unlike the Specialized / Cafe Roubaix case) and the logos are similar (with the key feature being a raised polo mallet) I think RL have a reasonable case to pursue here.
A court will decide, generally on factors such as these: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3) the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant's intent.
I'm not surprised RL have brought action here.
That said, its all very well discussing points of law but those participating in the discussion here may well be potential customers so the opinion of us men and women cycling alongside the Clapham Omnibus (except at left turns, ahem) are still of some value.
I know little of IP law, but I'd have thought you could pretty conclusively demonstrate that there was almost no overlap between the potential markets for these products.
They are both fashion products aimed at preppy, reasonably affable, brand aware young men.
Its charming to see so many people pussy footing around the legal niceties when the fact is the Chunk designs are a 100% rip off/parody/inspiration or whatever you want to call it. This is their whole 'shtick' as someone above said. They are blatant copies and the design of the rest of the range is too. So you have better buy one now if you want one cause Chunk are boned on this one.
Don't think I will be getting one though as I can't be bothered answering questions about it if I wear it, and when I can buy a real ralph for a quarter of the price on ebay (avoiding chinese finks.)
Because it wouldn't do, when commenting on legal news, to discuss the law when we could instead just reiterate "stands to reason, dunnit?" arguments? Ralph Lauren has lost this case once, and lost it again on appeal precisely because the law is more complex and nuanced than your Littlejohn-esque pearls of wisdom understand it to be.
Sir, you have insulted me, Jeeves fetch my gauntlet... I shall see thee on the dueling field. Pistols, swords or bicycles?
It's nothing like Specialized/Roubaix, this is very obviously based on the RL logo.
Exactly mate, I was with Cafe Roubaix, but this is way too similar, sorry.
One's a horse and one's a bike. Thats it, isn't it?
This really seems like one example where the big company (aka Ralph Lauren) isn't being outrageous. I mean the logos are similar-ish, they are for competing products, and the same market. Even someone with 0 legal experience can't be surprised that RL sued to prevent the use of that logo.
They do seem to specalise in "zany" parody t-shirts. This ain't Café Roubaix all over again.
The logos do have some significant differences, but the point of the Chunk one seems to be to play off of RL's. In fact playing off RL seems to be their whole schtick.
So, not a surprise it's bitten them back and a long way from the Specialized thing IMO.
Looking on their site they seem to lack any originality as a brand, everything they do is a play on someone else's work.
Looks like their £50k bill is going to increase when the court orders them to pay RL's costs as well!
The cynic in me thinks all of this attention is exactly what they were trying to provoke all along
I was sceptical of the whole 'little guys take on big business' when I read that they'd spent £50k on the affair. Seeing the link to the website confirms that they're quite consciously taking the piss.
It's not though, Specialized had a Copyright/TradeMark on a place name (shouldn't have even got it in the first place)
This is RL's logo, two different things.
It's fairly obvious that when Chunk did this they had the RL logo in mind.
Can't see it lasting long in court.
They shouls settle this on the Polo field, a team of bike riders on horses against a team of horse riders on bikes. Bloody great viewing - I'd pay to see that.
the Pool will have to be shallow for the bikes though
I had a shirt from Polo once. Full of holes it was.
"I had a shirt from Polo once. Full of holes it was.
posted by allez neg"
MINT....
Actually Chunk maybe taking the preverbal here http://www.chunkclothing.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=11_18 and have you seen the price?
My sympathy for them has nose dived considerably.
Awful clothes that should only be sold at the arse end of TK Maxx end of season sales.
I thought the King of England owned Polo?
Horse tastes better than bike
Will somebody please think of the children. .....
They have a point, simpletons could easily believe they have bought a budget edition RL top for people who can't afford a horse - ie most of the planet.
It's like Specialized / Cafe Roubaix all over again.
No - this is very different. I am not a lawyer, but I think RL have a point here. The logo is confusing and the products too similar. I think a request to modify the Chunky one would be reasonable in this case.
Whereas Cafe Roubaix were honest in their "innocent" usage of an obscure trademark, I just have the niggling feeling Chunky have gone too far.
I would say that's pretty fair from Ralph Lauren..
Take a look at chunk as a brand and they really are very similar in style and ethos/target demographic etc you could even say they've aped the Ralph Lauren website, yes one is on a horse and one is on a bike...but come on you don't need to be an expert in IP Law they've even copied Ralph Lauren's bloody 2013 t-shirt designs!
^^Chunk
^^Polo
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