Peloton has won a recent lawsuit over the use of the name “Peloton” in a company brand. The lawsuit was against a Belgian women’s company called “The Women’s Peloton.”
Elke Bleyaert, wife of professional cyclist Jasper Stuyven, founded The Women’s Peloton organization in 2021. The group is an online company & community for female cyclists. According to their website (translated):
“The Women’s Peloton wants to improve the quality for women on the bike. By investing in knowledge, we want to ensure that women get to know their own body, bike and equipment better. In this way, we hope that women cycle around with more self-confidence and continue to pursue their passion!”
The website shares that “The Women Peloton offers memberships in which all of this important information is provided through videos, webinars, lesson series, work outs”, and also has an online shop with some items for purchase.
Peloton took Bleyaert to court over the use of “Peloton” in their brand name, a won. Velo reports that this case has been ongoing for “several years”, saying “Blayaert defended her group for several years through a series of court proceedings before she finally lost the case this month on appeal.”
In a press release about the ruling, Blayaert said:
I wanted to go to court not only for myself, but also for all other companies with a passion for cycling.
It is our understanding that Peloton had made multiple good faith attempts to resolve the matter amicably, but ultimately had to take the steps of filing a lawsuit to protect their trademark.
In their own statement, Peloton said:
Fostering community is core to what we do at Peloton. While we may not own the common term ‘peloton’, nor do we wish to prevent others from using it in connection with cycling, it is important that we protect current and future Peloton Members when others use confusingly similar names to sell products and services that are comparable to ours.
The Women’s Peloton will have to change their name within the next three months or will have to pay a penalty of 500 Euros ($540 USD) for each day that she does not do so.
As some commentators have noted, Peloton does not current operate in Belgium. However, they have registered legal rights to the term “Peloton” in several countries in Europe and the EU, as well as in other countries around the world. Sporza reported more details on this with explanation (translated) from Marie-Christine Janssens, a trademark law specialist at KU Leuven.
“You can register any word from the dictionary and have an exclusive right to it, albeit in the domain in which your company specializes. In this case, the word is registered for everything related to sports. The court uses the following criterion: is there a risk that the consumer will link this new brand to the original company? That is enough.”
Peloton has a long history of protecting their trademarks – specifically around the name “Peloton”. In 2018, Peloton sent letters to Shane Miller (GPLama) over the use of “Digital Peloton News” in his YouTube show. In that case, after further communication, Peloton accepted his argument that he was “using the term ‘peloton’ descriptively, not as a trademark, and that you are not aware of any consumers being confused by your use.”
More recently, Peloton engaged in litigation with Peloton Cold Brew after requesting that USPTO invalidate a trademark. Part of this dispute centered around how Peloton has the “cafe” you can buy smoothies at in PSNY & PSL, and Peloton sometimes mentions food, coffee, and nutrition in social media & blog posts.
It is unknown at this time what the future holds for the rebranding of The Women’s Peloton.
This article was updated to include the press release and additional information from The Women’s Peloton website.
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