Last week China announced that they would block attempted .cn registrations of Olympic winners.
Today the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, which is the government copyright body, announced that they would attempt to block the sales of .com domains of Olympic winning Jamaican Athletes.
The athletes include Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Veronica Campbell-Brown.
The domain UsainBolt.com was at auction at Sedo.com but is now shown as canceled.
The nest stop for these domains maybe ebay or afternic, so buyer beware.
The JIPO said that athletes’ rights are secured globally. “Usain is a protected trademark and we would discourage anyone trying to infringe on his intellectual property rights. If these sites are not rightfully associated with the holders of Usain’s copyright then someone has taken an unfair advantage and exploited his domain name.
The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), would allow for action to be filed by the copyright holder against an infringing party.”
The Olympic committee also issued a statement that “The images and names of athletes cannot be used without permission. And so T-shirts and posters of these athletes without obtaining their permission is not allowed.
I think that it is a bit to laite