This topic came up during a recent stroll through the mall with my fiancee. We noticed a store billing itself as U.S. Polo Assn. Their products appeared to be preppy-style casual clothing for men and women, with a prominent logo featuring two polo players on horseback. Where have I seen something like this before?
It turns out the U.S. Polo Assn. isn’t related to Ralph Lauren at all. Instead, this brand is the replica men polo ralph lauren licensing arm of the actual U.S. Polo Association, dating back to 1890. Yes, kids, before Polo was a brand, polo was a sport. I won’t link to their site, uspolo.org, because it currently opens up a promo video with annoying music. Web designers, please don’t have your website play any sound unless the viewer actively clicks something to make it happen – I thought the entire Internet community agreed on that rule back in about 1997. But I digress…
So, it seems that about 30 years ago, the USPA, as I like to call it, decided to start offering branded goods for sale. Ralph Lauren’s Polo brand had launched back in 1967. In 1984, a Federal court held that the USPA could produce licensed goods as long as they were not branded in such a way that they would be likely to cause confusion with Ralph Lauren’s famous Polo brand. As my regular reader will know, likelihood of confusion is the chief issue in most trademark questions.
It seems that the USPA has, in recent years, expanded its branding and licensing in ways that have brought it closer to conflict with the RL brands. One such issue came to a head a few years ago, when the USPA began producing U.S. Polo Assn. branded perfume. Among many other products, Ralph Lauren is well-known for its line of Polo perfumes. RL brought suit, and replica ralph lauren t shirts the same Federal court ruled in 2011 that the USPA’s product infringed on Ralph Lauren’s trademarks.You should delete all of this text and replace it with text of your own. You can modify any text on your page with the Text formatting tools at the top of the page. To add other content, use the Media and Add-ons tabs. If you'd like to change your style template click on Styles. To add or remove pages use the Pages tab.