Thanks, KK, for your useful research.

While this clarifies some aspects of the USOC, I think at the end we will have to find more ways than using such legal terms to clarify the concerns under discussion.

There surely are no broadly accepted definitions of "non-commercial" and "not for profit" which we can use as an international community. Of course there are - different!!! - legal clarifications in different countries. We cannot just go by US legal statements - ICANN is working in different legal contexts.

As some contributors to the discussion said: We need an common sense understanding that is widely useful - also in Cambodia I want to add (as an example for many others).

Years ago, the NCUC discussion list was almost derailed for some time because a small, non-commercial and not-for-profit local sports club was a member, and dominated the discussion for some time with formalities: Yes, their club was was not-for-profit, they had a website - but they were not in agreement that the majority of the NCUC membership at that time was interested to discuss ICANN "politics" and we had general Civil Society concerns: like the effort to keep ICANN staying within the security and stability mandate, and not to be dominated by commercial interests, and we were concerned with freedom of expression - at that time a problem maybe in Cambodia, but not yet in countries like the USA where at present there is an intensive effort going on NOT to pass the SOPA legislation, etc.

To focus mainly on clear-cut legal statements - thanks to KK for lifting these up - will not solve fundamental problems related to what we should be and do together.


Norbert Klein
Phnom Penh

=

On 11/16/2011 05:39 PM, Konstantinos Komaitis wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite">

On the issue of the USOC, I would like to reiterate that the USOC may be non-profit but it is certainly non-commercial. Here is a quote from a US case: ‘On review of the statute and the history of its enactment, it is apparent that the primary purpose of these provisions is to secure to the USOC the commercial and promotional rights to all then-unencumbered uses of "Olympic" and other specified words, marks, and symbols, see United States Olympic Committee v. Intelicense Corp., S.A., 737 F.2d 263, 266, 222 USPQ 766, 768 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 982 (1984), but subject to the commercial rights that existed at the time of enactment’ (the statute referring to the protection of the Olympic mark). This case, clearly indicates that the USOC has commercial rights on the term Olympic and, thus, have commercial interests deriving from the name.

 

And here is another interesting article I came across, which in my eyes at least makes USOC purely a commercial enterprise: http://www.21mktg.com/docs/USOC_Sign_Citi-SportsBusiness_Journal.pdf

 

KK

 

Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,

 

Senior Lecturer,

Director of Postgraduate Instructional Courses

Director of LLM Information Technology and Telecommunications Law

University of Strathclyde,

The Law School,

Graham Hills building,

50 George Street, Glasgow G1 1BA

UK

tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306

http://www.routledgemedia.com/books/The-Current-State-of-Domain-Name-Regulation-isbn9780415477765

Selected publications: http://hq.ssrn.com/submissions/MyPapers.cfm?partid=501038

Website: www.komaitis.org

 



-- 
A while ago, I started a new blog:

...thinking it over... after 21 years in Cambodia
http://www.thinking21.org/

continuing to share reports and comments from Cambodia.

Norbert Klein
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Phnom Penh / Cambodia