VANCOUVER - VANCOUVER (CP) _ The federal government has introduced a bill barring the use of Olympic words by anyone other than official sponsors, saying sponsors need to have their investment protected.
But a group that investigates consumer and copyright issues says federal trademark rules already on the books should be enough and wonders whether such a bill "overreaches" and treads on everyone's right to freedom of expression.
The Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act was tabled in Ottawa on Friday to provide "special, time-limited intellectual property protection for Olympic and Paralympic words and symbols," says a news release from the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee.
The committee said it has been in "extensive dialogue" with Industry Canada on the need for the legislation to ensure the corporations that have paid large sums of money to be designated official Olympic sponsors get protection for their investment.
"The purpose of this legislation is to protect against implied association or ambush marketing which is not sufficiently considered or protected against in existing trademark and copyright law," said Bill Cooper, the committee's director of commercial rights management.
"That grey area is really where we encounter the most challenge in raising the funds necessary to stage a successful Games. So that's where we need security for existing and potential sponsors coming in."
The legislation won't apply to local businesses that have been using Olympic words since before 1998, when Vancouver was given the right to bid for the Games, and as long as the business's use of the word or symbol doesn't create an association with the Olympic brand.
But the legislation isn't retroactive, so businesses that have been using the symbols and have already run afoul of the Olympic committee won't get a reprieve.
Olympic committees have cracked down hard in the past on businesses and groups they feel have been violating the Olympic trademark.
In 2004, the Canadian Olympic Committee ended up in a high-profile battle with Mosi Alvand after it demanded the owner of the Olympia Pizza and Pasta Restaurant remove signs from his restaurant that featured the Olympic rings and torch.
Alvand said he'd take the battle to the courts. Cooper wouldn't comment on that case directly.
In 2005, the U.S. Olympic Committee demanded the Ferret Olympics change its name. An organizer for the event to raise money for a ferret shelter in Eugene, Ore., said the decision came as a special disappointment to a weasel named Spaz which was hoping for gold.
More seriously in 2005, the Vancouver Organizing Committee pushed Imperial Oil to change a promotion campaign the committee said insinuated a relationship to the Olympics. Imperial Oil rival Petro Canada is an official sponsor of the 2010 Games.
Cooper said the new law, if passed, would be applied in a "disciplined, sensitive, fair and transparent manner."
The legislation is in line with similar laws passed in other Olympic cities, including Turin, where the Winter Games were last held. The United Kingdom has already passed such a law for the London 2012 Summer Games.
A search of an online directory indicates there are at least 15 businesses in the Vancouver area using the word Olympic, ranging from a real estate office to a boat centre. A local sex therapist also uses Olympic as a key search word.
David Fewer, a staff lawyer at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, doesn't like the proposed legislation.
There are already rules around copyright and trademarks and those should suffice, he said.
If they don't, the government is running the risk of violating freedom of expression rights.
"The words Olympic and Olympic Games weren't invented with the modern Games. The roots of that event lie in a common culture, a common shared experience," Fewer said from Ottawa.
"Efforts to extend your intellectual property rights around that in an exclusive way that elbows other people out of using that imagery and sharing in that cultural context is pretty aggressive."
He said the grandfather clause in the legislation makes it a little less intrusive.
"But it does create the impression of `Well, wait a minute, how come people who started drawing upon that common cultural reference in 1997 can continue to do so, but not in 1999? What happened to suddenly disentitle Canadians?'"
