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Comment by Spoom | Hacker News Reader

If someone posts a prominent disclaimer that they are not an official sponsor, why should they be prevented from referring to an event by its actual name?

If I owned a bar, and I was showing the London 2012 games on the TVs, I would advertise that I was showing the London 2012 games on the TVs. Exactly what is wrong with that?

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I would think that there would be some sort of "fair use" for trademarks. My understanding is that the philosophy behind trademark law in the US is always based on whether or not a reasonable consumer would infer that the advertisement is officially associated with the trademark holder. But given that, I don't know why so many companies use the term "The Big Game" rather than "Superbowl"; maybe they like it better than having to explicitly include a disclaimed. And I also have no idea how the law works in the UK.

There is, it's called nominative use (in the US, but similar must exist overseas). Otherwise no-one would ever be able to refer to a trademark without being open to a lawsuit. That's how books about technologies with trademarked names can exist, for instance.

You'd still create an association between your ad and London 2012 in addition to using the term 'London 2012'.

So then the question becomes this: Should trademark owners be able to quash any unauthorized "connections" to their product, even if it's made clear that the connection is not a sponsorship, only a mention? Frankly, that seems like an incredible overreach to me, and I believe one not supported by law.

I used their language after reading terms on their site. They mention "establishing a connection" and outline terms their "protected" terms and logos. It may as well be an overreach but it seems they're an effective bully and the choices would be to either stop mentioning Olympics in ads or fight over interpretations of the various protections in court. I think most targeted vendors that would take on them would probably go bankrupt pretty fast.

Either way, I don't really know if they should be able to quash unauthorized ads but I do know they're going about it like assholes.

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