Monday, October 5, 2009

US Olympic Committee fights McClatchy's attempt to copyright "The Olympian" name

The US Olympic Committee is fighting McClatchy's attempt to copyright the name of its paper in Olympia, Washington.

The U.S. Olympic Committee is protesting an effort by the parent company of The Olympian to trademark the newspaper’s name.

The McClatchy Co. submitted its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in October 2006, shortly after it bought Knight-Ridder, the newspaper’s former owner.


Lawyers representing the committee argue that the similarity in appearance and sound of its trademarks to The Olympian “tends to cause confusion or mistake, to deceive, and to falsely suggest a connection.”



This move should guarantee the US Olympic Committee a gold medal in stupidity.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if they will insist that we rename the Olympic Mountain range up here as well.

Anonymous said...

No one has said a word about the Olympic committee attempting to make the name all their own. It is McClatchy that is trying to pull this off.

Sorry but the term "Olympian" has been around hundreds of years longer than the rag and is a generic term. It will never be allowed and rightfully so.

Funny story. Microsoft's last venture into monopolizing names blew up right in it's face. They attempted to legally strong arm the creators of Lindows. Microsoft sued them because the name was similar. The judge told Microsoft that if they pursued the case he would rule that they had no right to the name, "Windows" as it was a generic term. Microsoft ended up paying over 1 billion to settle a case that they brought themselves.

Anonymous said...

According to many if its readers, it should really be named the "Daily Zer-O" anyway.....

Anonymous said...

Much of the material in the Daily 0 is culled from the News Tribune anyway. May as well call it Tribune South Edition.