{"id":237891,"date":"2010-01-26T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100114\/1227357759.shtml"},"modified":"2010-01-26T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T01:59:00","slug":"vancouver-olympics-brand-protection-guidelines-almost-entirely-arbitrary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/237891","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver Olympics &#8216;Brand Protection Guidelines&#8217; Almost Entirely Arbitrary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/profile.php?u=leigh\">Marcus Carab<\/a> writes <i>&#8220;VANOC (the Vancouver Olympics organization) has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vancouver2010.com\/more-2010-information\/about-vanoc\/the-vancouver-2010-brand\/protecting-the-brand\/\" >22-page booklet on their site covering trademark issues<\/a> around the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>Most of it isn&#8217;t new, but I found the description of their method (starts on page 12) to be very interesting. They describe a rubric with six categories that they use to determine if any given reference to the Olympics is potentially infringing. There are a few things about the method that stood out to me (beyond the broader fact that they are essentially attempting to rewrite trademark law as they see fit):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Each category is scored from 1 to 3, with a lower score being ideal. There is no option for zero in their ranking, and yet the final grading scale begins with &#8220;Unlikely to Infringe&#8221; rather than &#8220;Not Infringing&#8221;\n<\/li>\n<li>They offer a bunch of examples and walk you through the math, then they <b>ignore the outcome<\/b> in some of them. Seriously. A bakery called &#8220;Olympic Bakery&#8221; that has existed since 1965 scores a 10 out of 18 on their system (&#8220;potential infringement&#8221;). Almost as if they realized how ridiculous that was while writing it, they decided to say it falls under &#8220;unlikely to infringe&#8221; even though it very clearly doesn&#8217;t by their own math. A few pages later, a Winter Festival scores a &#8220;potential infringement&#8221;, but they class it as &#8220;likely to infringe&#8221; with no explanation given.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mostly this is just the same old Olympic shenanigans, but I found this booklet quite illustrative of just how ridiculous things can get.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>It sounds kind of like the way they judge some of the events in the Olympics themselves.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100114\/1227357759.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100114\/1227357759.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100114\/1227357759&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=b3e0c9ede103cce7219c7f6a139573f1&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=b3e0c9ede103cce7219c7f6a139573f1&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=QukuBy86slA:NheWc1Mr7r0:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=QukuBy86slA:NheWc1Mr7r0:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=QukuBy86slA:NheWc1Mr7r0:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/QukuBy86slA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marcus Carab writes &#8220;VANOC (the Vancouver Olympics organization) has a 22-page booklet on their site covering trademark issues around the Olympics. Most of it isn&#8217;t new, but I found the description of their method (starts on page 12) to be very interesting. They describe a rubric with six categories that they use to determine if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}