Olympic Committee Cracks Down On Domain Owners

RollingThunder writes: "The Globe and Mail has a story about the International Olympic Committee suing to have 1,800 domains removed. All the domains contain the words 'Olympic', 'Olympics', or 'Olympiad', and variations thereof like '2004olimpics.com'. Interesting that they're going after the DNS hierarchy (the lawsuit is filed in Alexandria, Va.) rather than the daunting task of going after the domain owners themselves." Wow. Maybe they could organize something where the domain owners could compete in a variety of fitness tests and games, you know, like the... Oh, never mind.

Never attribute to malice...

what can adequately be explained by stupidity: Why don't they just go after the names they actually plan on using, instead of attacking anything with olympics in it? After all, it's not like the fake names will confuse people -- they will see the web site name from marketing, on TV.

Or maybe they figured that since they were going to the DNS services anyway instead of the individual owners, they would be able to get rid of everything in one fell swoop. How canthey be that callous with other people's resources?

Uh oh.

Hmmm. The city of Olympia, Washington is gonna have to rename itself if they want a web page. And Olympia Dukakis, watch out ...

No... it's malice.

Believe me. I lived at a US Olympic Training Center for years, and I've got friends in various parts of the USOC.

We're talking about the people who won't let you use footage of *yourself* competing for less than $1000/second... even though they've never shown the footage to anyone, and nobody ever saw you win your medal. They're cutting back numbers in most sports (particularly those with weight classes, like wrestling, weightlifting, judo and taekwondo), so that they can economicially keep including more sports (like synchronized swimming and fscking ballroom dancing), for media reasons. Similarly, countries must now qualify their athletes, if they want to compete in the games. Of course they still talk about de Coubertain's vision... "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle."

Anyway, that's the IOC's up to on the surface. I won't go into the corruption stuff, since I can't substantiate it... I just saw a lot of it, and heard about a lot more. Suffice it to say that the bribery scandals weren't much of a shock. The amusing thing was, just as they were going on, the USOC was cutting back towel service for the OTC athletes, due to lack of funding. Scumbags. They're worse than the NCAA, and that's saying something.

Anyway, no, this is a huge moneymaking organization which certainly doesn't give a damn about anyone else's resources. Heck, they even warned us not to use the rings on our web pages or fundraising stuff. This sort of thing is very typical of them; it's not stupidity.

Legit uses?

What about sites with legitimate uses, like the Science Olympiad [scioly.org]? I hope the IOC is told to take a flying leap in this case...

Eric

Re:Not surprising

What a bunch of jackasses.

I suggest that everybody contact Michael Payne, the Marketing Director of the IOC and let him know what you think. The address is:

Michael Payne, Marketing Director
C/O International Olympic Committee
Château de Vidy
1007 Lousanne, Switzerland

Or, if you don't mind the phone bill, call them at 41.21.621.6111.

Or fax them. (41.21.621.6216)

If you would rather pester the Organizing Committee for e-mail addresses of who to contact, call them in Salt Lake City, toll free, at 1-800-212-2002 (Fax: [phone])

Prior Art

The Olympics Committee has precious little basis for this. The Olympics is named after Olympia and Mount Olympus. I think Zeus has prior claim to the name.

IMHO, it might be good to steer clear of everyone in the Olympic Committee for a while. The Greek Gods never had good aim with those lightning bolts.

Special exemption

While it seems ridiculous to claim a trademark over a word that's thousands of years old, this case is specifically empowered by Congress. The US olympic committee (and I guess by extention the IOC) were given the trademark rights to the word Olympic (despite its very common use) by Congress a something like fifty years ago. So it's actually very likely that this will stand up in court. I think a really interesting question is the one of the remedies the olympic committee is seeking. They seem to want Network Solutions to use a filter to automatically reject any registration with the words olympic in it. This seems pretty extreme and is the part of the suit I'd really like (and expect) to see thrown out.

remember that nsi owns your domain names :)

they cant exactly sue the domain operators, since they dont own the domains :)

NSI set themselves up to be sued... remember how everyone was/is mad at them for saying that they OWN all domain names? well, now it's comming back to bite them in the asses :)

Can you get more hypocritical?

In 108 years, the Olympic Committee seems to have forgotten that the very spirit and name of the olympics was lifted wholesale from the ancient games. It's not as if they obtained rights to the term in a legal transaction with the original trademark owners.

They could use the term 'olympics' for the modern game because it was already in the three-thousand year old public domain. Just because the modern incarnation has been around for a century and has become high profile doesn't give them a magical right to take the trademark out of the public domain!

Going after others that use the name in the spirit of the original games (science olympiad, special olympics, etc.) is admitting that the modern olympics shouldn't have had the right to use the name for the past century!

Kevin Fox

Re: special, gay olympics

From here [internationalgames.net]:

• Why Can't the Gay Games be the "Gay Olympics"

  At the conclusion of the Gay Games this past month in Amsterdam, an ancient question arose. Why can't the Gay Games be the Gay Olympics? Many participants seemed to be perturbed that the games were being unfairly made to refrain from the use of the word Olympic.

  The answer has it's historic roots in decisions made by the resurrectors of the Olympic Games over 100 years ago. No games has been singled out or treated differently. The IOC has since it's beginnings held steadfast in it's opinion that the word Olympic be used for the Olympic Games alone, the Special Olympics being the one exception.

  In 1913, Japan, China and the Philippines established a regional games which were called the "First Asian Olympic Games". The name was changed to the Far East Championships for all subsequent editions.

  When Alice Milliat, the founder of the Federation Sportive Feminine International, wanted to establish events for women in 1922, she called her games the Jeux Olympiques Feminins. Pierre de Coubertin and the IAAF took notice. A compromise of sorts was agreed to. The FSFI would drop the use of the word Olympic, and the IOC would admit women into it's games.

  In 1923 Frenchman Jean Petitjean was promoting his first games for university students as the University Olympic Games. De Coubertin again protested and convinced him to change the name. The International University Games were established, and are know known around the world as the World University Games, World Student Games or Universiade.

  More recently the Huntsman World Senior Games were inaugurated in 1987 as the World Senior Olympics, but were made to change their name to the World Senior Games the following year.

  Various Police and Fire Olympics have been asked to refrain from using the word Olympic to describe their events.

  The case involving the Gay Games (International Olympic Committee vs. San Francisco Arts and Athletics, 781 F. 2d 733) was decided in January of 1986.

  So what about the Special Olympics? The Special Olympics were begun by Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1968. The use of the word Olympic by her organization was addressed by the USOC in 1971. At that time the USOC gave it's approval for the Special Olympics to be the exception to the rule and the only organization outside the Olympic movement with permission to use the word Olympic. This permission would be expanded in 1988 when the IOC recognized and endorsed the Special Olympics movement.

  In this context the lawsuit between the IOC and the Gay Games in the early 80s becomes just one of many instances in which the IOC has asked organizations to reserve the use of the word Olympic for the Olympic Games.

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Let the Greeks sue them

Since the word Olympic comes from the original greek Olympics, maybe the government of Greece should sue the IOC.

And, for those of you that want to know, fucktheolympics.com, fucktheioc.com, and olympicdoghumping.com are all available.

This is not new.

Well, the domain name thing is new... I unfortunately, had to suffer through the 88 winter olympics as a resident Calgarian... Naturally, a lot of small businesses got warnings about their naming choices including one Greek restaurant owner who grew up 10 mi. from mount Olympus (no, not the one on mars). My fave of all time, though, was the Salvation Army's silhouette billboard campaign that featured one particular piece of artwork that the IOC claimed "looked" too much like a bobsled logo. The artwork in question featured a person in a wheelchair. If you can mistake a wheelchair for a bobsled, then you're suitably out of touch with winter sports that your mindshare shouldn't really matter to the IOC.

Will they sue...

Olympic Airways? [olympic-airways.gr] Or Olympus cameras [olympus.com]? Or the National Park Service, which operates Olympic National Park? [nps.gov] Or Olympic College [ctc.edu] in Washington State? Or will they only sue Mom and Pops who they know won't have the resources to fight?

Arrgh.

sulli

Re:"Olympic" is not PD?

Congress granted "Olympic" special status a while back. You're pretty much guaranteed to be accused of violating the trademark if you use "Olympic" anything. "Olympia" is apparently OK.


...phil

Oh-Oh

SpecialOlympics.org is going to be pretty fucked. Maybe the Olympic Comittie should push some of those wheelchairs down the stairs while they're at it...

Make them post a bond

I think organizations that attempt to have domains pulled should have to post a bond to cover the owner's costs if the owner prevails. Right now, you're looking at a costly legal fight that penalizes you even if you win. Companies and others use this to intimidate innocent targets into backing down.

So how does congress control this?

Forgive me, but I can't seem to find the section of the constitution regarding "granting exclusive use of english words to a single organization". I do remember some bit about inventors and creative works and stuff, but nothing about "give us money for whatever law you want".

Yep, just reread that section, and guess what: It's not there. The closest congress comes is regulation of interstate trade, which the current supreme court actually thinks means "interstate trade", as opposed to congress's "whatever the hell we want". Trademark is protection against fraud. This law granting exclusive use of this word to a single organization is not about protecting against fraud, and isn't about anything congress is empowered to do.

Re:Uh oh.

Actually there was a guy in Olympia, Washington who's swimming pool company was named Olympic Swimming Pools. The IOC sued him. Although he did win the lawsuit, legal bills caused him to shut down.

The IOC is a bunch of real assholes. Personally, I don't watch the olympics, read about the olympics or even CARE about the olympics for that matter. Just keep me out of it.

Simply stated, I'd like to see some counter-suits caliming malicious prosecution. I mean, you can't get any farther from trademark violation.

they did it in Atlanta too

When they were here in Atlanta in 1996, they had every store with a name similar to "Olympic" change its name. The local news profiled one small cafe' with the name something like "Olympic Cafe" that had been in business for over ten years. They changed their name to avoid the suit. Typical strong arm tactics. It would seem that a trademark like "Olympic" would be sufficiently diluted after, oh, 2500 years...

-tim

Re:Special exemption

See here [house.gov] for the specific bill.

Short synopsis:

• Can't use the words "Olympic", "Olympiad", "Paralympic", "Paralympiad", or "Pan-American" in a trademark or to induce the sale of goods without the IOC's permission
• Exceptions are made for pre-existing (before Sep 21, 1950) or for geographic references to mountains that were named before Feb 6, 1998.

This is so bizarre...
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