In the domain name space The Olympics have been given the strongest protections including ICANN prohibiting the registration any new gTLD containing the word Olympics in it.
However in the rest of cyberspace the Olympics enjoys no such protection.
CNN just covered the “Selfie Olympics” that has been trending on Twitter.
Not only is the word Olympics being used in a way on Twitter and with Twitter handle in a way not permitted in new gTLD land, the Twitter account uses the logo includes the 5 Olympic rings.
The logo is not just used on the twitter account but in everyone of the thousands of Selfie’s that have been posted and entered into the Selfie Olympics.
Of course we have seen for many years that courts have said its perfectly fine for Google to sell ads under keywords of trademark holders to the trademark holders themselves or competitors, the same kind of conduct that would subject a domain holder to a $100,000 fine by the same federal court that allows Google to sell the ads.
One day either the laws around domain names are going to have to catch up with the rest of the online world or vice versa
Maybe it will be in 2014.…
