The Olympics: IP infringement, anti bribery and staying open for business

As Olympics fever grips the UK, how are you going to make the most of it? Having fun is perhaps not quite as easy as it may at first seem.

The Olympics represent enormous marketing opportunities for businesses and that means they will naturally wish to protect their intellectual property rights. After all, they have invested considerable sums of money in it and will hope to make even more.

As a professional services business, it is particularly important that you do not cross intellectual property rights or into what might be classified as ambush marketing: it won’t be great for your reputation. You must avoid creating an association with the Games, even a tenuous one.

In practical terms, that is likely to mean avoiding mixing together words such as Games or the date 2012 with words like medals (or gold, silver and bronze), London, summer – as well as more obvious words like sponsor, Team GB or paralympics. And, you must avoid copyright breaches, such as symbols, logos or mottos of any of the key bodies, merchandise and awarding tickets as prizes without specific authorisation.

Olympics-related marketing is strictly controlled by the London 2012 organising committee (LOCOG). You should expect action to be taken if there may be a breach and could face both civil and criminal penalties. Action is also taken at the small scale.

The Olympic sailing events will be held in Weymouth and Portland. Back in 2007, Dennis Spurr of the Fantastic Sausage Factory in Weymouth had to remove a sign on his factory of Olympic rings made from sausages with the date 2012 – he moved on to try five squares made from sausages instead with a 2013 date, although that didn’t go down well either and there is no sign of it on its website.

Jamie Oliver has just cancelled his music and food festival at London’s Victoria Park, one of the BT London Live sites offering entertainment with big screens showing Olympic coverage, because it was unclear whether stalls might be associating themselves with the Games while they were not official sponsors.

So, you’ll need to think carefully about how you position any client, office or staff event. Technically, even holding an internal charity cake bake for staff that uses an Olympic theme may violate LOCOG’s pretty strict rules.

Inviting clients to events is a good way to network and build personal relationships. But your clients may well need to check how this fits with anti-bribery legislation. Some of your important clients may subsequently decline invitations to Olympic events, even though you have spent a lot of money buying a package of tickets.

Business implications

As a manager, you will also hope that you will be able to run your business with some semblance of normality. Or will there be a winner’s prize (better not call it an Olympic prize) for whoever manages to get to work first on the busiest days?

Fortunately various websites can now provide basic information on the venues and travel arrangements, the main ones being: Get Ahead of the Games and National Rail Games travel. For those in London, London 2012 is useful, along with TfL’s page on the Olympic route network.

Large businesses in London have been asked to consider flexible working, home working and staggered hours. Looking further ahead, if staff get a taste for this, it could lead to a rise in more formal requests from employees in due course, raising employment law issues.

You may have staff volunteering at the Games – do you give them any time off or are they required to take it as a holiday, and how do you make a policy that is equitable for the rest of your staff?

Remote working may cause pressure points on your IT infrastructure and IT support desks; there are certainly concerns that local line connections may be busy and slow or access restricted.

Finally, with missiles on the roof tops, jets flying overhead, assorted protestors and cyber-attacks, if you don't have active business continuity plans, it may be harder to track down employees and ensure they are safe.

Having fun seems curiously hard work! Still, while you have some knotty issues to deal with, so do your clients – we are certainly finding they are seeking advice and that is a great opportunity to assist them.

One last thing: it’s a big event – enjoy it.