The International Olympic Committee (IOC) identifiers are entitled to enhanced protection under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of March 20, 1883 (last amended on September 28, 1979) (wipo.int). This article provides that the Member States of the Union for the Protection of Industrial Property (179 to date: wipo.int) must refuse or invalidate the registration and prohibit the use of the acronyms or names of international intergovernmental organizations as trademarks. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) benefits from this protection. The process is straightforward: the IOC informs the States of its intention to protect a specific Olympic sign.
In the Internet age, the need for similar protection against the registration and misuse of domain names has arisen. Thus, since the adoption of the Protection of IGO and INGO Identifiers in All gTLDs Policy (icann.org), it is legally forbidden and a priori technically impossible to register the following terms in generic top level domains:
- olympic
- olympiad
- Olympic
- Olympiad
- olympisch
- Olympic
- olimpiad
- أوليمبي
- أوليمبياد
- 奥林匹克
- 奥林匹亚
- 奧林匹克
- 奧林匹亞
- ολυμπιακοί
- ολυμπιάδα
- 올림픽
- 올림피아드
- лимпийский
- olimpiada
(icann.org).
Such a restriction constitutes, in some way, a transposition of the provisions of the Paris Convention into the legal framework of ICANN. A question has emerged: should registrars also prevent the registration of domain names similar to the terms contained in the official list above? Decision D2022-3210 answers this (WIPO, D2022-3210, The International Olympic Committee v. Registration Private, Domains By Proxy, LLC / Ryan Crowther, <olympicmetaverse.com>, transfer, panelist Andrew Brown KC). Sections 3.6, 4.1, and 4.2 of the Protection of IGO and INGO Identifiers in All gTLDs Policy refer to “exact match”, which is a relatively strong clue. However, no provision of this Policy expressly addresses the question of the scope of protection. The panelist based its decision on ICANN’s Final Report on the Protection of IGO and INGO Identifiers in All gTLDs Policy Development Process (icann.org). It is deduced from the latter that only domain names identical to the terms retained in the list are reserved. Conversely, registrars are not required to block similar domain names.
The limited nature of the protection can be explained by reasons relating to fundamental rights. Indeed, extending the protection scope would prohibit any reservation of similar domain names. In practice, no one is fooled: the vast majority of domain names similar to the word “Olympic”, which do not belong to the International Olympic Committee or an authorized individual or entity, are registered in an abusive manner. However, in theory, certain domain names similar to the word “Olympic” could be registered and used for legitimate purposes relating to freedom of expression. Although the cases are rare, respect for freedom of expression explains the imperative need to restrict the scope of the protection to the exact correspondence of the words retained in the list of reserved names.
In terms of the strategy for protecting the Olympic brand, it is also appropriate to highlight the importance and the promptness of the reaction of the International Olympic Committee, which, indeed, cannot let so-called “Olympic” competitions develop in the metaverse. This was perhaps the project envisaged by the holder of the domain name<olympicmetaverse.com>.
