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 :)