If you work in any sort of media at all (or you’re a small winery in the Olympic peninsula), you’re well aware that the Olympics Committees of the world are unbelievably rabid enforcers of trademarks related to the Games. But now, “trademarks related to the Games” is starting to include national anthems, numbers, and common nouns.

News broke this week that the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, having failed to think of any good mottoes by itself, has borrowed and trademarked phrases from the public-domain Canadian National Anthem. The committee has generously assured citizens that they’ll be free to sing the anthem all they want. So, that’s nice. But presumably, anyone who, say, publishes the words to an anthem on a blog that also has Google Adwords might be in violation of the prohibition on commercial use of the words of the song.

And the Olympics haven’t stopped at co-opting parts of the national anthem of a sovereign nation for purely commercial gain. Oh, no. The Vancouver committee, per the CBC, “managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons last year that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law.” Those Games-related phrases include “winter” and “2010,” as well as “gold,” “silver,” “medals,” “sponsor,” “games,” and “21st.” And the Canadian government has handed over special enforcement powers to the Olympic Committee for the duration of the law, which expires in 2010. (Oh, crap, I just used 2010. Am I going to get a C&D? Apparently not; officials say it would only be a problem if I said “Vancouver 2010″ or “2010 Games.” Oh. Crap.)

What’s astonishing to me is not what a sick, commercialized, speech-sucking monster of ownership the Olympics have become. That’s not new, although it does get exponentially worse and more disgusting with each iteration of the Games. (Crap.) No, what’s truly astonishing to me is that the Canadian government would so cheerfully hand over the keys to the trademark castle and set a precedent that will have every event or movie that comes to Vancouver (and a lot of movies come to Vancouver) thinking they might be entitled to a little trademark love. O, Canada. We had hoped for so much more.

Filed under: News, Rant, Olympics, trademark