Right. Which is why any news organization that eschews the words is either kidding around or being very stupid.
This is a huge part of the answer. The NFL has an Official everything and it needs those sponsorships to mean something. If being the Official Left-Handed Supermarket of Super Bowl XLVIII doesn’t mean anything because any company can promote itself using the name of the game, companies won’t pay the NFL for those sponsorships.
This is it in a nutshell.
You can’t sell the rights to, say, Pepsi to have a Super Bowl promotion if Coke can just go ahead and do one as well without consequence.
And as it was explained to me, if you’re willy nilly about enforcing the naming rights that courts could take a dim view on you going after selective targets, so you almost have to go after everyone.
I’d like to challenge Amateur Barbarian to cite a news organization that is avoiding use of *Super Bowl *or Olympics.
Newspaper advertisers . . . well, that’s different. While there is such a thing as “trademark fair use,” it would apply to someone saying “nine out of ten dentists find the Puppy Bowl more entertaining than the Super Bowl,” not to someone hitching their mattress sale to the *Super Bowl *star.
Incidentally, protection for Olympics and the interlocking rings symbol comes from a separate statute, 36 U.S.C. 380, and not from trademark law. Thus the decision barring Gay Olympics. But not even that can overcome the First Amendment to affect newspaper stories.
Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, California was built in 1932, when Los Angeles hosted the Olympics. The school’s campus was used for some of the staging of the Olympics, and in recognition, the school’s sports teams are authorized to use the name “Olympians”. They also use the five Olympic rings and the “Citius, Altius, Fortius” motto.
The paint company is grandfathered in, before the USOC went heavy on their trademark protection. If you wanted to open say an Olympic Hamburger stand, you would get an invitation to sleep with the fishes.
Did you find a cite for news organizations having to pay to use the word Olympics in their news coverage?
From your link:
The media is not “running scared.” Not a single 200-year-old newspaper is avoiding use of the term “Superbowl” (or “Olympics,” for that matter) because they are afraid of legal action from the N.F.L. Using a trademark in connection with news reporting is not infringement. It’s called nominative fair use of a trademark. Every 200-year-old newspaper has known that for 200 years. The N.F.L. knows it. It’s simply not happening.
If any particular newspaper chooses to use some other term, like “the Big Game,” in its news coverage, then they’re doing it for some other reason. Period.
(I emphasize news there, because it’s conceivable that a newspaper can be working with an advertiser to promote the advertiser’s goods or services, in which case, the nominative fair use defense might not apply.)
Of course they can. They just can’t use the name. The thing is, they don’t have to. Again this year I will be at the New York New York party. They are calling it their Super Party. It will be in their cirque du soleil theater. You pretty much need to have a casino host to get in. They have to actively keep people out of the party. They try not to get it too crowded because it annoys the whales.
More info on Super Bowl here:
(Basically stating what Acsenray said.)
Also from:
If you stand was on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, and you did not use the five rings or in any other way tie your company or your product to the Games, you would probably win in court - but it might cost a fair amount of time and treasure.
Reading a Metro (small paper meant to be read in 10 minutes). They didn’t say “Super Bowl” either.
Google Olympic Restaurant - there’s tons of them.
There’s even an Olympic Hamburger in LA.
It’s on the street of the same name. The USOC probably couldn’t do anything about that.
Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act of 1998, 36 U.S.C. §220506, gives rights to the U.S.O.C. way beyond ordinary trademark protection. There are two, very limited exceptions. One is for businesses located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and the other is for businesses that have been using the term “Olympic” in their trademarks continuously since before the 1950s.
In Japan, there is a chain of shopping centers called Olympic. Check out their logo on the upper left corner of the page.
Trademark law, like other kinds of intellectual property law, is on a country-by-country basis. The extent of the protection in any particular country will vary depending on what law it has enacted.
So what do you think this means? I can only guess. But I have some pretty good guesses –
This business has licensed the use of the trademark from the U.S.O.C.
This business has been in operation since at least the early 1950s.
This business just hasn’t been noticed yet and will soon be getting a stern letter.