Lord Coe is touring the North West this week, speaking to local authorities and chambers of commerce encouraging them to become involved in the 2012 Olympics, and how they will be “Britain’s Games”.
Yet at the same time, at the London organisers’ offices at Canary Wharf, the LOCOG legal department could be sending out the latest batch of warnings to local authorities and businesses if they dare to try to utilise any of the magic words “London”, Olympics” or “2012”.
A campaign headed by double Olympic gold medallist Kelly Holmes for Kent County Council is among the latest recipients of the warning missives from the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG).
Under the Olympic and Paralympic Bill going through Parliament (it received its second reading in the House of Lords last week), the London organisers expect to be granted stringent powers to prevent “ambush marketing” of logos and emblems in the build-up to 2012, as a means of protecting the target of £500 million in sponsorship deals, a vital part of the organisation’s budget (there is already legislation on the UK’s statute books to protect the Olympic brand under The Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995).
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Concern has been expressed that individuals will be sent to prison once the new law is enacted simply for using the words “gold” and “2012” in the same sentence. “Goodness knows how the diary and calendar publishers will manage when they get to 2011,” one branding expert suggested this week.
However, lawyers and licensing experts have defended the London legislation.
Nick Bitel is a leading specialist sports lawyer who is also chief executive of the London Marathon. He has already successfully obtained a trademark for the phrase “London Marathon” (although an early attempt to claim similar rights to the words when used separately did not succeed).
Mr Bitel sought to reassure bodies who might be considering establishing their own departments, projects or websites to optimise their roles with the 2012 Games. “We fully support the efforts of London 2012 to protect themselves from ambush marketing,” he said.
“We have confirmation from the Secretary of State that nothing in the act would prevent us from using, for instance, the phrase ‘London Marathon 2012’ to describe our own events and on the appropriate merchandising.”
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And according to David Stone, a partner at Howrey, in a recent edition of The Lawyer magazine, “The opposition is misconceived.
“The London Olympics Bill is a realistic and proportionate response to the increasing problem of ambush marketing. If we are to have spectacular Games, we must protect the hand that feeds them,” he wrote.
“As ambush marketers have become more creative, the legislature has had to respond.”
Mr Stone’s article explains that the Bill, based on Acts used in Australia and Greece, will create a new intellectual property (IP) right. “It is designed to catch those who seek an association with the Olympics that they have not paid for, without having to list exhaustively all the ways ambush marketing could be illegal.”
All of which is entirely laudable. But how practical such measures might be for local authorities, such as Kent, or how desirable it might be for LOCOG’s legal watchdogs to spend all their energies policing assumed breaches of the law, remains to be seen. Mr Stone says that no offence will be committed where the Olympics is irrelevant to the context, and Simon Gresswell, vice-president of licensing at sports agency IMG, agrees that “all LOCOG has sought through the legislation is sensible and reasonable proactivity at this early stage.
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“Between now and 2012, I think the distinction needs to be made here between companies and local authorities. We have seen at other major sports events, such as Euro 2004, some companies, without rights, somehow using a version of the official logo. In the case of London 2012, there won’t be any excuse for this sort of breach of the rules, but the golden rule for business ought to be ‘If in doubt, ask’.
“For local authorities, there should be less of a problem, since they will hardly ever be exploiting the association with the Games for profit, and indeed will be mostly promoting the Olympics in their own area.”