One was to Pippa Middleton’s family web business, Party Pieces. The objection appears to have been to a picture advertising multi-colored paper chains that looked too much like the Olympic rings. LOCOG will take no further action here.
Another threat is aimed at a family business, Olympic Removals in Waltham Abbey (London), which has used its name and the five rings logo for 22 years. “The company, based in Station Road, has been told to remove the symbol from nine removal vehicles, company advertising and letterheads - at a cost of thousands, or be sued by 2012 organisers,” writes the Waltham Forrest Guardian.
But LOCOG is also busy monitoring the internet for illegal footage of the games. “A parody of the commentary, dubbed ‘Irish boats’, was created using footage of the sailing. In fact, it only used footage of the boats getting into position for a race, not a race itself,” comments Dr Monica Horten in her IPtegrity blog. Nevertheless, almost as soon as it appeared on the Vimeo website, it was taken down and replaced with “Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by International Olympic Committee claiming that this material is infringing: Boats.”
In this instance, however, copyright law has come to the rescue. The video has been placed on YouTube, with a supporting disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 claiming protection under fair use as criticism. It is a very straightforward parody of the quality of Olympics commentary, it is very critical, and it is very funny. “The clip is clearly poking fun at the Olympic commentary, which is some cases has been very bad and uninformed,” comments Dr Horten.
But she has a serious purpose in highlighting this incident. It demonstrates, she says, “how corporate power can be abused under the enforcing of copyright and intellectual property rights online. Having rejected ACTA, that was also about corporate power, we should be very wary of any changes to EU law that might permit or legitimate this kind of behaviour any further.”