to think the Olympics have no right to ban the words "summer" and "London"?!!

[motherofallhangovers]

"Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London"." source.

And they're actually going to police this!

"Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not ... illegally associating themselves with the Games"

WTF?! I feel like I've just wandered onto the set of the satire "Twenty-twelve", it's so farcical.

But no, this is real!

Abolutely ridiculous.

And I'm a huge supporter of the Olympics.

mad

How on earth do they get the "right" to do this?

Since when could large corporations lay claim to words in general usage?

• shame I can't spell!!!

Oh FFS! How does that affect the London Eye then? Or people marketing spray tan, or holidays??!!

They are welcome to the word 'summer' it's got no use after all has it?

Advert for a jewellers - "this season which is not spring, autumn or winter buy your loved one something special. We have a new selection of precious metal items in both colours, you know the ones we mean in our flagship capital city of England store"

Katherine

Exactly, hugandroll!!

Otherwise they'll have to watch out for the purple people

"Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Under legislation specially introduced for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000."

Shit, 20k! The jewellers will have to sell a lot of their precious metal items to cover that!

Not true. Sloppy journalism.

Easily solved.

Lndon, Olympcs, gld, slver, brnze, Smmer, and yep, you guessed it, s*onsor.

I fear a national shortage of asterisks is imminent.

I thought they weren't allowed to use those words when associated with certain other words - "Combining the word "games" or "2012" (whether in numerical or fully written form) with any of the following words would be a problem: "gold", "silver", "bronze", "London", "medals", "sponsor" and "summer". The combination of "2012" and "games" is also presumed to be an infringement." From here

The Listed Expressions are:? any two of the words: Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve OR? any word in the list above with one or more of the words: London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver

So OP is correct, but hose words need to be in conjunction with others.

It's a bit ridiculous no-one can use the words "summer 2012" though...

So my local butcher can't advertise his gold medal winning sausages or his Norfolk Bronze turkeys?

So no pub could write
'Come in and support London 2012'.
Seems completely OTT to me.

1. Why is protecting the brand so important?

The London 2012 brand is our most valuable asset and we must protect its value to ensure we can fund the staging of the Games in 2012. But we have also been entrusted with protecting the long-term value of the Olympic and Paralympic brands.

The Olympic symbol is one of the most recognisable and valuable brands in the world, and we have obligations to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to maintain this value and prevent unauthorised exploitation. We also have obligations to protect the Agitos, the symbol of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

After our Games in 2012, the Olympic and Paralympic brands will live on and will need to continue to communicate the ethos of the Games. We must therefore carefully manage how the Games? Marks are used and what the London 2012 brand stands for. In doing so, we hope to preserve the value and meaning of the Olympic and Paralympic brands for generations to come.

We also have a more immediate need and obligation to protect and maintain the current commercial value of the London 2012 brand. The hundreds of millions of pounds necessary to organise and stage the Games is being raised by the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) from the private sector. In return for investing in the Games, we have promised our sponsors and merchandise licensees exclusive rights to use the London 2012 brand, as well as the Team GB and ParalympicsGB brands, and to associate with the Games.

Therefore, we are obliged to prevent other companies undertaking unauthorised activities that undermine or devalue the exclusive rights we offer our sponsors and licensees.

Hang on Itsall, this goes against De Coubertin's ethos for the games. They were to be for all. It's only since 1984 that the games have been sponsored, as Los Angeles couldn't afford to stage them after Reagan introduced massive tax cuts and cut public spending.

If we rearrange the capitalist model so that in doesn't only favour the already rich and the global corporations then we could have a games without sponsors. And hopefully get our well paid industries back.

That explains the weather then. We have no 'summer'..they've pinched it.

Nicholas That was a C&P from the games website, it is not my view :)

I'm preparing a whole set of replica Olympic Torch hat-pinny things. I spent some time today checking whether the wearing of these at tomorrow's Torch relay is likely to see us all banged up for unauthorised Olympic activity. However, I suspect we are more likely to be run over by the phalanx of socking great lorries advertising those well-known products not usually associated with healthy sporting pursuits.

Summer? Since when was that anything to do with the Olympic brand?

As for London words fail me why dont they take down all the street signs then?

For the love of fuck... Good luck with that then :o

They seem to be forgetting that the 'brand' is only worth something if people are still watching. All this commercial crap is making me less inclined to watch the games.

Did you see that you can only buy the official Olympics merchandise in the official stores with cash or Visa? Their ad for this is the astonishingly bad,

'proud to accept ONLY Visa'

How can you be proud to offer less of a service than all the other shops?

And they are removing the cash machines at the Olympic venues and replacing them with Visa machines. It is going to be chaos cause most EU countries don't have Visa debit cards, they often still have maestro cards.