BigShinyThing

The International Olympic Committe (IOC) is fiercely defensive of its intellectual property (IP) rights. Woe betide anyone at Athens 2004 who was caught on their way to the stands wearing non-sponsor-branded clothing or drinking the wrong soft drinks.

With the help of the UK government’s Olympics Bill, drawn up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to establish the legal framework for London to stage the Games, the IOC is tightening the screws even further ahead of London 2012. The BBC reports that, in the interest of protecting the Olympic brand from other brand-owners ‘cashing in’ on the event, the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like games, medals, gold, 2012, sponsor or summer in any form of advertising. The IPA is not amused, and argues that fines of up to £20,000 for breaches of the Bill will rule out any sort of 2012 ‘halo effect’ for businesses in the UK. According to IPA legal director Marina Palomba, as quoted in the BBC report:

Blatant ambush marketing has to be prevented but there are already laws in existence to prevent that.

This is new legislation which gives the event holder unparallelled power. Why should the IOC have the monopoly on the terms London, 2012, summer, gold, silver and bronze?

London businesses in particular will be paying for these Games but they are being deprived of benefiting from them because they will basically have to pretend they are not happening.

At this point, the Government has come down firmly on the side of the IOC. Will the IPA manage a last lap sprint and get restrictions softened? Keep track of the Bill via our favourite source of Parliamentary intelligence, TheyWorkForYou.com.