The US Olympic and Paralympics Committee is suing Prime, the drinks brand of YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI, accusing the company of using its trademarks without permission.
On the packaging of a drink featuring basketball player Kevin Durant, a three-times Olympic gold medallist, Prime unlawfully used Olympic trademarks, the USOPC said in a lawsuit filed in Colorado on Friday.
It also used the trademarks in social-media posts promoting the drink, the USOPC said.
The trademarked phrases included “Olympic,” “Olympian,” “Team USA,” and “going for gold.”
The USOPC has the rights to a range of Olympic terminology and imagery within the US. It “relies significantly” on licensing its trademarks to fund the US Olympic Team, the lawsuit says.
This includes an agreement with Coca-Cola that grants the company exclusive use of Olympic trademarks, including the “Olympic” and “Team USA,” for beverages in the US, the lawsuit says.
“Much of the value of the sponsorship agreement is derived from its exclusivity,” the USOPC wrote in the lawsuit. “The exclusivity of this agreement … is threatened when individuals and organizations use USOPC trademarks without authorization.”
The lawsuit included screenshots showing examples of these phrases being used in Prime’s Instagram and LinkedIn posts. At the time of writing, Business Insider could not find the posts in question on Prime’s social media channels.
Seemingly the only reference to Durant on Prime’s social media channels was a 17-second video clip posted on July 11 featuring him alongside Paul and streamer iShowSpeed, who is a Prime ambassador.
One of the Instagram posts that was included in the lawsuit appeared to celebrate the launch of the drink at Walmart, Kroger, and Target.
At the time of writing, the drink wasn’t listed on Kroger and Target‘s websites and was only available on Walmart’s marketplace via a third-party vendor. The description described the product as a “New Special Edition KEVIN DURANT USA OLYMPICS Bottle.”
The USOPC described Prime’s actions as “willful, deliberate, and in bad faith, with malicious intent to trade on the goodwill of the USOPC and the IOC.”
The USOPC said that its counsel had contacted Prime Hydration on July 10 to ask it to stop infringing its copyright but that Prime had continued to ship the product.
Prime first launched in January 2022, when it sold out within hours. When it launched in the UK, it quickly became a status symbol among young people and retailers struggled to keep it on their shelves, spawning a black market.
The drink comes in a wide range of flavors and has two main variants — Energy and Hydration. Prime has been accused of targeting its highly caffeinated Energy drink at young consumers.
The US Olympic Committee and Prime did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular US working hours.
