A small French company specializing in equipment for amateur sports clubs has been ordered to change its name within ten days so as not to harm the influence of the Paris Olympic Games.
Located in a municipality in Dunkirk, the company called the “Olympiads” was given notice by the organizers of the world sports competition, under the pretext that the title was the intellectual property of the Olympic Games.
Paris 2024, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and the French National Olympic Sports Committee are therefore asking the local firm to change its company name under penalty of prosecution, according to what France Bleu reported on Monday.
“What we are accused of is that our name, the Olympiads, is the intellectual property of the Olympic Games. All these terms are overprotected,” Guillaume Bourgeois, manager of the small company of 11 employees, told the French media.
In order to comply, Mr. Bourgeois is therefore forced to take steps to change the name of his company called the Olympiades in 2026, which could cost him the equivalent of more than $90,000, according to the French media.
“It involves developing a new graphic charter, finding a new name, paying a communications agency, buying a site, changing our brands, our vehicles,” complained the director of the Olympiads, evoking a fight of “David against Goliath”.
