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Businesses To Be Censored on Use of Olympics

Posted by Zonk on from the 2012-is-now-offlimits dept.

pitpe writes "The BBC reports that the proposed London 2012 Olympics Bill bans the use of words related to the Olympics by non-sponsors, including 'Olympic', '2012', 'gold', 'summer' and 'games', amongst others. The bill is aimed at ensuring corporate sponsors, who have provided £790m of the IOC's £2.25bn marketing revenue over the last four years, will not be deterred by 'ambush marketing' where rivals to the official sponsors try to take advantage, but businesses warn it could make it technically illegal for pubs to use chalkboards to flag up coverage of the Games." From the article: "The London 2012 website has already posted a warning listing a string of Olympic-related words and images that are off limits to all but official sponsors. And advertisers' representatives have criticised the new Olympics bill because they believe it will make it almost impossible for most companies to even acknowledge that the Games are happening without getting into trouble. "

4 of 520 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, and a band too... by garcia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They won't allow The Olympic Hopefuls to use Olympic in their name either. It's amazing that this crap was written in to law. Now the band has to change to "The Hopefuls".

    Seriously, I love how they were given powers over a word that was around LONG before "The Games" were.

    What a bunch of shit.

  2. unreasonable gits... by Travelsonic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the "London 2012" website:
    You can support the 2012 Games by not engaging in the unauthorised use of the Olympic Marks

    Yeah? If by "engaging in the unauthorised use of the Olympic Marks" you mean by using them at all, how about you respect the people, and not make such fuchking unreasoanble demands in the first place?

    --
    If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
  3. Re:This is nothing new by Maestro4k · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Think about it. If you're Coca-Cola (or some other huge multinational) that's spending 8-9 figures to be the "official whatever of the Olympics", you're going to want to be pretty sure that your competitor isn't going to just say the same thing unofficially. Pretty sure in this case means contractual language with teeth. Hence, the IOC turning around and doing the same thing. Sure, and it's reasonable to expect that your competitors can't imply they're official sponsors. But this is going way beyond that, a quote from the article:

    But the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like "games", "medals", "gold", "2012", "sponsor" or "summer" in any form of advertising.

    Heaven help you if you're having a conference of some kind in London in the summer of 2012, you might get heavily fined when you try to promote it, even if it has _nothing_ to do with the Olympics, occurs at a different time (well it'd kind of have to since the city will likely be packed because of the Olympics) or date.

    If you make games for children better make sure you don't inadvertantly advertise any as summer games, you'll break this law. Again, you could be advertising a glorified lawn sprinkler for kids to play games under in the summer heat but since you "combined" summer and games in your ad the law applies and you're screwed.

    I'm sure you'll say "but they'll be reasonable and won't pursue those types of cases" but we already know how well that type of stuff works. You can find many cases of the RIAA & MPAA sending out Cease & Desist letters because they found files containing words that also are used in songs/movies they own but had nothing to do with them. I seem to remember one where the C&D referred to a file that was around 500kb in size, but the MPAA thought it was one of their movies. Rationality won't enter into the enforcement of this law, it'll get the same treatment, anything that looks like it applies will get slapped with at least a lawyergram and likely charges levied. Even if they company ends up off the hook they'll have paid a penalty for defending themselves for doing nothing wrong.

    No matter how you look at it this is a very bad law, and very bad precedent. Why should the IOC be given sole ownership of common words beyond Olympic/Olympics? Most of those words are used a lot, and in non-olympic references. Even if you think the words are defensible, including the damn year is insane. I suppose everyone in London will have to be sure to avoid mentioning the year in advertising in 2012 just to be on the safe side.

  4. A few years back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    About a decade ago, when the Olypics were in the US, there was a pizza delivery business in the same city as the games. It was named "Olypic Pizza".

    The olypic games' sponsorship branch sued the pants off the small-business owner, to get him to change the name of his business. Eventually he had to relent, after the legal fees nearly bankrupted him.

    Why did he fight it? Simple. The store was NAMED AFTER HIM, and he had been in business WITH A TRADEMARK ON "OLYPIC PIZZA" FOR OVER 10 YEARS!

    So because the olypic sponsors didn't to eal with the "ambush advertising" this guy represented, he had to give up the business name he had in the area FIRST, his trademark, and couldn't even use his full name during local interviews.

    Screw the olympics, and boycott every single damn company that sponsors them!