Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
The famous French tennis player, Jean-René Lacoste (1904-1996), seven-times Grand Slam winner, first became known as “The Crocodile” in the American Press of the 1920s, due to the combination of tenacity and fierceness of his game. He was the best male tennis player of the late 1920s, on both sides of the Atlantic, once he beat Bill Tilden, the reigning American champion.
What is less known about Jean-René Lacoste is that he was also an inventor, who was granted more than 30 patents for inventions that truly changed the world of tennis and sports fashion. Indeed, before following his passion for playing tennis, and becoming a successful tennis player, Lacoste was a polytechnicien, an engineer with a dynamic drafting board, who got into Polytechnique, France’s most competitive and prestigious engineering school. Thus, all of Lacoste’s inventions were seriously technical. Whether related to new light metal tennis rackets, ball-throwing practice machines, or the combination of technical comfort and elegance in sports fashionwear (on and off the courts), Lacoste’s inventions were both transformative and enduring.Even the well-known Lacoste Crocodile logo, now found on all Lacoste fashionwear, was a significant game-changer, as it was one of the first visible logos found on clothing of the 1920s. A humorous appropriation of the nickname the press had given him, stitched directly onto the front left side of his jackets, making Jean-René Lacoste immediately recognizable, while also ushering in a brilliant marketing trend.
The Lacoste crocodile trademark is active as ever, posting 10-figure revenues for the Lacoste company that was originally founded in 1933. The below Lacoste crocodile trademark was registered on Aug. 15th 2006, at the USPTO Trademark Database, with the serial No. 78713877. The trademark is owned by Lacoste Alligator S.A. Corporation Switzerland. The claimed Lacoste crocodile mark is described as follows:
“The color(s) green, white and red is/are claimed as a feature of the mark. The mark consists of a stylized representation of an alligator or crocodile. The mark is green, with a red mouth and white dots and white eyes."
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