NOZI, NAZI or 2012?

Did you know that the 1936 Olympic games had Nazi associations?  You’d be forgiven for thinking the guys who organised London’s big event in 2012 didn’t.

So offended was I by the official logo that within a couple of hours of first seeing it on June 4, 2007, the day it was released, I had not only rearranged it to spell Lion, Zion and Nazi but had registered the domain names, LionLondon.com, ZionLondon.com and NaziLondon.com, all of which I then offered free to the LOC on condition they abandoned their ill-conceived logo and replaced it with something (anything!) more appropriate.

Years passed without any response from the LOC so I applied to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) for a trademark, based on my rearrangement of the London 2012 design, “NaziLondon”.  After a year or so of deliberation, in a letter dated April 7, 2010, CIPO rejected my application on the grounds that the mark “when spoken” contravenes paragraph 9(1)(j) of the Canadian Trademarks act, stating:-

9. (1) No person shall adopt in connection with a business, as a trade-mark or otherwise, any mark consisting of, or so nearly resembling as to be likely to be mistaken for, (j) any scandalous, obscene or immoral word or device;

I immediately resubmitted my mark, calling it “NOZI”.

On 15 October 2010, CIPO, an agency of Industry Canada, itself part of the Canadian Government, formally rejected my trademark application for “NOZI” claiming not only that my mark itself contravenes Paragraph 9(1)(j) of the Trade-marks Act (see above) but additionally that it contravenes Paragraph 9(1)(n)(iii), prohibiting the registration of…

…(n) any badge, crest, emblem or mark… (iii) adopted and used by any public authority, in Canada as an official mark for wares or services,”

And citing mark No. 919,978 as the mark in question, with the registration of the London 2012 logo by the Canadian Olympic Committee to emphasise their point!!

In short an agency of the Canadian Government rejected my NOZI mark on the grounds that:-

i) it is the word “NAZI” and

ii) it is already in use as the Official Logo of the London Olympic Games!

ie. A Canadian government agency believed the London 2012 Olympic Logo was (still is!) the word “NAZI” rearranged !

You can find both my “NOZI” mark and the COC’s 919,978 mark at CIPO’s online trade-mark database and decide for yourself if you agree with CIPO’s view.

What you then do is up to you but as these modern era, “NOZI Olympics” (it was supposedly a private individual who paid the £400,000 cost of the logo) have long passed, with my emails, faxes and or letters to Sebastian Coe, the LOC, its official service providers, Deloitte, its lawyers, Freshfields, the Government and various MPs all totally ignored (assuming my letters and emails were delivered as addressed) perhaps, with the Japan 2020 Olympics just around the corner, you might want to watch closely to see what new scandals, if any, might be brewing.

(Correction, I wrote to Deloitte, Vancouver which according to my Canadian MP, John Weston, has “no affiliation with” Official Services Provider to the games, Deloitte, London despite their sharing the same name and logo and being linked from the same Deloitte.com website.)