Lacoste ends long-running logo battle with Asian rivals

Golfer Yani Tseng poses with a Lacoste crocodile bag.

French fashion company Lacoste has sued many companies and individuals for copying its crocodile logo over the years. But its long-running legal battle over alleged trademark infringements involving two well-established Asian companies using similar logos has ended in peace.

The French company in 1933 registered its famous logo, named after tennis player Rene Lacoste, who was nicknamed "the Alligator" or "the Crocodile" in the 1920s for his aggressive style on the court.
In Asia, two brothers surnamed Chen set up a garment company in Singapore in 1947 and managed to register a crocodile logo in 1951. The two later split up, with one brother covering the markets of Singapore and Malaysia while the other one moved to Hong Kong.

For a long time, there were three known companies using a crocodile logo — one in the west and two in the east.

The Chen brothers quickly expanded their overseas markets to more than 20 nations and areas where they also registered the logo for their increasing lines of products to cover leather products, shoes and golfing equipment. The company based in Hong Kong was later acquired by another enterprise, thus severing its ties with the Singapore group.

The three companies started a series of lawsuits against each other in the late 1960s when they clashed over markets in Japan, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand and other Asian nations. Following battles lasting more than a decade, they eventually reached a truce with an understanding that they would join forces against all other newcomers who decided to also use the same alligator logo. But new disputes arose when they escalated competition for a bigger share of the fast-growing market in China.

The French group filed lawsuits against both the other companies at the Beijing High People's Court in 2000. The court ruled that the logos, with one crocodile's head looking toward the right and the other to the left, have coexisted in the Chinese market for many years and had distinctive differences in their lettering and other design features. Customers should be able to easily see the differences between the logos used, said the court, prompting the parties to end their dispute.

Quality and branding experts in China said it is a smart move to end the long disputes and avoid further attritions of resources.

Initially, legal battles over trademarks can generate public attention about the products involved, but prolonged confrontation will generally be harmful to the brands and affect the interests of all parties, said one of the specialists.

Lacoste is expected to continue its fights against other smaller Chinese companies that are found to have imitated its logo, said market analysts.

The company has already taken an unspecified number of imitators, including textile factories and retailers, to court in China over the years