Saturday, January 24, 2009

Vanocuver 2010 Olympic Games and London 2012 Olympic Games

The legal and practical difficulties of stopping people from using the English language as intended (e.g. "Visit Vancouver in 2010", or "See Ya at the 2010 Games") will be almost as much fun to watch as the the 2010 Olympic Games themselves.

Beware of using any two expressions in Part 1 of this Schedule or any expression in Part 1 with any expression in Part 2.

And, of course, the very word OLYMPIC is a "prohibited mark" by virtue of s. 9(1)(n)(ii) of our Trade-marks Act and is also locked up tightly by the legislation itself along with a lot of other surprising things here and here.

Be careful of using any words in such a way as I have in the bolded words of this blog entry.

Apparently, legislation similar to Canada's C-47 exists in England, and is being flouted far and wide. The idea behind these types of laws is to stop people from using certain "expressions" in such a way that the public might think that the business's wares or services are somehow endorsed by the powers that be or that there is an association between the business and the powers that be.

A lot of lawyers will be looking for gold medals for creative challenges to the expected excesses of VANOC concerning the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

HK

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