When Paul Major showed up at the Telluride Foundation office after the New Year’s holiday in 2011, his voice- and e-mail boxes were full.
Dozens of Brazilian media outlets wanted his perspective on the new 2016 Summer Olympics logo unveiled by Rio de Janeiro organizers. The Brazilian logo was very similar to the foundation’s logo.
Four-and-a-half years later, the Telluride Foundation’s fight to protect its trademarked logo — a colorful swirl of embracing, dancing figures — has gotten nowhere.
No, the foundation is not planning to use the community-grant money it collects from sponsors and donors to wage a legal battle against the International Olympic Committee. (The foundation takes pride in the fact that 88 cents of every dollar it raises is spent on childhood development, education, environmental protection, arts and culture and human services programs in San Miguel, Ouray and Montrose counties. )
But the foundation also is not going to sit idle while its 15-year-old logo is used to promote Olympic sponsors like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Visa and Dow Chemical.
“All the responses we’ve had from the IOC have been dismissive. They are very courteous, as the Swiss can be, but they have been dismissive, basically saying ‘Go away,’ ” said Major, the foundation’s executive director. “Well you can’t just dismiss us because you think we are at the end of a box canyon in southwest Colorado. We have donors who contribute to the USOC also. We have corporate sponsors who, well, they are frankly upset that our logo is being used by someone else.”
This is not the first time the foundation has tried to protect its logo, which was created by the Boulder design firm Communication Arts and trademarked in 2000.
Four years later, the exact logo was used to promote Carnaval 2004 in Salvador, Brazil. Major sent a letter then asking the city to not use the logo, but said he never heard back.
The Rio 2016 logo is three dancing figures. The Telluride Foundation’s logo has four. The colors are similar. The arm-locked dancing figures in the Brazilian Olympic mark spell “Rio.”
Brazilian reporters quickly picked up on the Olympic logo’s resemblance to the Telluride trademark, which was known from the award-winning 2004 Salvador Carnaval design.
The director of the design agency that created the 2016 Olympic logo admitted to Brazilian reporters that his logo was similar to Telluride’s, but said the idea of people embracing is not unique, as reflected in French artist Henri Matisse’s 1909 painting “The Dance.” Fred Gelli told globesporte.com that his agency, Tatil, researched the logo to make sure it didn’t mirror other designs.
“When we are talking about a group of people hugging, it is an ancient reference, it is in the collective unconscious,” Gelli told the Brazilian sports news website.
Richard Foy crafted the Telluride Foundation’s logo when he owned CommArts. He agrees that both logos express a universal theme.
“But when you put the two logos together, it’s pretty clear one is a knock-off of the original. The two logos are much too similar to be coincidentally occurring. It’s a deliberate act of taking something that seems like a good idea and copying it,” said Foy, noting that his firm had handled major logos across the country, including a patented font he used to design the title for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.”
Both the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee are very aggressive when it comes to defending trademarks, which include the word “Olympic” or the five-ring logo. Even the tiniest use of protected marks warrants scrutiny by the Olympic guardians. The USOC once asked the Olympic Cellars Winery in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to abandon the Olympic name.
“They can be very aggressive when they think their rights are being violated but they seem to be quite mute when the shoe is on the other foot,” Major said.
The foundation has hired a trademark attorney who has sent letters and held discussions with both the IOC and the USOC. The foundation is arguing the Rio logo creates consumer confusion.
Kristelia Garcia, a trademark law professor at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder, sees the similarity between the two logos. But she doesn’t see a lot of options for the Telluride Foundation. It’s clear, Garcia said, that the foundation and the Olympics are not working in the same industry, so the consumer-confusion argument is tenuous.
“In order to really press this, they would need to spend a lot of money,” Garcia said. “Maybe they could attempt to reach out and ask for a small licensing fee, something that could add another scholarship or grant. The chance of the Olympic committee revising the logo is slim to none.”
Major acknowledges there is little chance Rio de Janeiro will pull its 2016 logo from the market a year before the Summer Olympics. His foundation doesn’t really have a proposed remedy.
“It’s not up to us to resolve this. It’s up to them and they have not been forthcoming. They should be coming to us with a suggestion about how to resolve this,” Major said.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins
What is the telluride foundation?
Since 2000, the Telluride Foundation has directed more than $35 million in donor funds toward childhood development, education initiatives, environmental protection, arts and culture and human services in San Miguel, Ouray and Montrose counties. The foundation has supported initiatives that bolster community development and small business in the Paradox Valley. It has distributed scholarships to local high school graduates pursing science or math degrees.
Last year the foundation distributed $2.9 million in grants and $1 million to local non-profits, celebrating the fact it spends 88 percent of every dollar raised on programs.
