Dear US Olympic Committee: Tweeting About The Olympics Is Never Trademark Infringement

Trademark

from the seems-reasonable dept

It seems the USOC is just getting started with its bullying bullshit this Olympic season. Fresh off the heels of threatening Oiselle, a corporate sponsor of an Olympic athlete (but not a sponsor of the Olympics themselves), over trademark concerns because the company posted a congratulatory tweet for its sponsored athlete that included the Olympic bib she was wearing, the USOC is now sending out a helpful little reminder to other companies that have sponsored athletes but not the games. And by helpful, I mean that it’s helpful in seeing just how blatantly the USOC will outright lie in order to continue its bullying ways.

ESPN got its hands on the letter the USOC sent around.

“Commercial entities may not post about the Trials or Games on their corporate social media accounts,” reads the letter written by USOC chief marketing officer Lisa Baird. “This restriction includes the use of USOC’s trademarks in hashtags such as #Rio2016 or #TeamUSA.”

It’s the kind of blanket statement that the USOC likes to make, even as it avoids any of the pesky nuance that might call its claims into question. Certainly, as part of trademark law, a company’s Twitter account could not claim to be an Olympic sponsor, or attempt to confuse followers into thinking it had some kind of affiliation. And this might translate into that company not including trademarked hashtags themselves. But what about retweets? What about posts that mention the sponsored athlete but not the hashtags? What about informing followers of the success of the athletes the company sponsors?

Well, for that last one at least, the USOC has boldly claimed it owns the rights to facts.

The letter further stipulates that a company whose primary mission is not media-related cannot reference any Olympic results, cannot share or repost anything from the official Olympic account and cannot use any pictures taken at the Olympics.

Yeah, that’s not actually true. Like, at all. As we’ve pointed out in the past, several times, there is no applicable part of trademark law that applies to facts, such as the factual results or stats of a sporting event. And there’s no line in the sand to draw between the average Twitter user and a corporate Twitter account when it comes to this, meaning that corporate sponsors of athletes are absolutely free to mention the results of their sponsored athletes at the Olympic Games or trials. Beyond that blatant lie, claiming that a company’s account can’t retweet an Olympic account misunderstands the very nature of social media (make your damn account private then!), while blanket claims about what types of pictures of the games can be used completely ignores any Fair Use arguments that could be made, of which there are many.

But this is SOP for the USOC, even as they further lie about the necessity for all of this bullying.

While the USOC argues that money from sponsors and licensees who pay for the rights allow them to support athletes to go to the Games, Bergesen says the stringent rules hurt the athletes because companies that can’t support them during the Games can’t afford to pay them because of lack of promotion.

“It costs $300,000 to send an Olympian to the Games, and for our athletes, the USOC has reimbursed them about 1 percent of that cost,” Bergesen said. “Is that supporting them?”

Well, no, but of course that isn’t the point of the Olympics, which long ago transitioned into a money-making machine rather than any kind of international sporting competition. The corruption is so bad, few countries even want to bid to host them anymore. But, sure, keep focusing on corporate sponsors that want to congratulate their athletes, as though that was the problem.

Filed Under: olympics, sponsors, trademark
Companies: usoc