Ex-Olympic athlete Karl Grant rapped for misuse of Olympic branding
by Jamie Bullen
A former Olympic athlete who now runs a gym in Canterbury
has spoken of his shock after he discovered he illegally used the
Olympic rings as part of a summer promotion.
Weightlifter Karl Grant, 42, has been managing the Ladies of
Leisure gym in St Dunstans Street for the past 12 years and
represented Great Britain at Athens in 2004.
Looking to
cash in on the London Games as well as encouraging more women to
join his gym, he splashed out £2,000 on leaflets, banners and
A-boards with a cut-price membership offer which included the five
rings.
However, after a conversation with a city shopkeeper who said
Canterbury City Council asked him to remove a poster with the five
rings Mr Grant discovered he was breaching trademark laws.
He said: “It all seemed to be going fine - the first week went
past but then I had a phone call from a member of the public who
received one of these leaflets.
“He was a shop owner and it was a very caring phone call
- he told me he had tried to put an internal in his
window.
“I then investigated it over the next couple of days and found
what he was saying was perfectly true, in that apparently we are
not allowed to use a number of things, there is no trademark sign
on the Olympic rings that makes you aware of this.
“The council
haven’t actually made anybody aware of this and they are going
round to local businesses to do things to promote their businesses
and we seem to have come out the other side of that.
“It is going to hit us quite hard, it has cost us about £2,000
to run a non-campaign: that is £2,000 we have just let go. There is
no way we can recoup that.”
Mr Grant said he spoke with two friends and fellow Olympians who
were also unaware of the rules and believe businesses are at risk
by a lack of information stating you cannot use the rings.
He added: “How much did it cost us to bring the Olympics to this
country?
“You would have thought there would have been a clause that says
if we are paid all this money local businesses have the right to
use the images for a set period of time, but there’s nothing like
that.”
A spokesman for Trading Standards said they were unable to
comment on individual cases.
16/07/12
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