Bring It On!

International Olympic Committee Gets Burned

January 2nd, 2009 | by Tom Harper |

A moment of schadenfreude. One of the victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is the International Olympic Committee. They could lose up to $5 million. Greed meets greed.

Now, I like the Olympics as much as the next person. The anal retentive schmucks that run the International Olympic Committee — not so much.

For years the International Olympic Committee has been suing, or threatening to sue, anybody — anywhere — who uses the name Olympic. I live near Washington’s Olympic Mountains. Olympic National Park is here; the capital of Washington is Olympia; and the area north and west of Olympic National Park is called the Olympic Peninsula. So far nobody’s forcing Washington to rename the mountain range, the capital city, the park or the peninsula. But you never know.

It stands to reason that a lot of local businesses here have used the name Olympic. Most of them are too small for the International Olympic Committee to bother with, but again you never know. It’s a Sword of Damocles that could fall any second, or it might never fall.

A local winery — Olympic Cellars — has been threatened by the International Olympic Committee. This winery has had the nerve to be successful and start selling some of their wine outside of Western Washington, and the winery is a popular tourist attraction. Goliath the International Olympic Committee was not amused.

For the moment there’s a sort of uneasy truce between Olympic Cellars and the International Olympic Committee. As long as Olympic Cellars stays small and confines most of its sales to the immediate area, nobody gets hurt. OK, no problem. After all, the purpose of going into business for yourself is to stay small and be unsuccessful, right?

Here is a link to some of the other trademark infringement lawsuits that the International Olympic Committee has filed or threatened to file.

Maybe if these assholes hadn’t been so obsessed with squishing every business and organization that uses the name Olympic, they would’ve paid more attention to their investments and not gotten swindled. They’re sort of like that oblivious driver who’s going 45 in the left lane while blabbing on the phone, changing the CD, eating, texting — and then veers off the road and into a ditch.

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