I had heard that the organisers of the Olympics are control freaks but this is extreme. With a heavy-handed legal letter the US Olympic Committee are warning any organisation that is not a sponsor that they cannot tweet about the Olympics. I get that they want to protect their brand from ambush marketing but it just seems ridiculous that you can trademark hashtags. It also seems to be entirely focused on a B2C perspective. What about B2B? What about individuals tweeting about the Olympics who work for a non-sponsor (like me)?
As the article below says does that mean commercial entities cannot even re-tweet an IOC tweet? Crazy. What if a sponsor is a client or supplier to another company - surely it would be a nice way to show support of your partners to re-tweet their Olympic support? It will be interesting to see how this approach plays out over the next few weeks in the B2B space.
I am hoping that common sense will prevail but this just seems like the Olympic Committee thinking about the internet all the wrong way around. I will let you know if I get sued :)