Do you think he'll sell more healthy fried breakfasts, pasties or fizzy pop if he can call his cafe Olympic as opposed to soemthing else? Do you think people will not walk in his door if it's not called Olympic Cafe?

How about they let this guy call his cafe "Olympic", and then in a fair world anyone can call whatever they like Olympic as well. Would you be complaining that every single shop, beverage, boiled sweet, toilet roll etc...etc...etc... was branded "Olympic"? Because I'm guessing that's what would happen. Then FatDonalds and co. would be branding everything they sell Olympic as well, only they wouldn't have to pay a penny for it.

Just out of curiosity, is Olympic no longer a generic geographical adjective? If not, how do you refer to something from or pertaining to the area of Mt Olympus?

Mt McDonald Olympus, its getting painted yellow soon

I once went to Mount Olive, but she was having none of it

No one seemed bothered that Little Chef had been calling one of their breakfasts "Olympic" for decades

I couldn't tell you without looking it up who won the football or the tennis in Beijing, but I can tell you where I was and who I was with when Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal in the pool.

1. Do you know they don't pay royalties?
2. As you say "decades". If the cafe in discussion had been named The Olypmic Cafe for decades there would be no issue, he'd be able to continue to use the name.

Well, they started in the old BC times.



You do realise that 'Olympic' is a very, very old word. And even the idea of the Games being 'Olympic' is very, very, very old? Yes?

You tell me – how the hell did anyone cope before MaccyD and Coke decided it was theirs.



I notice that DHM has posted on this thread since, but not answered your post.

rlNo panic folks, it's going to be £500m under budgetrl

so, the whole thing was a snip at a mere £9.8bn.

I am not against the event, but I do wonder just how much of that money has actually been "spent" and how much has lined people's pockets.

You also have to question just how much of that British taxpayers money has trickled back down into the British economy - I know of one Irish (as in Dublin, not Belfast) large sub-contractor who has has a workforce of between one and two hundred working on the Olympic Park almost since construction started, you may be able to guess where most of the workforce has come from and where all of the profits have gone - they were involved on the Wembley Stadium project too, European tendering rules mean that it would be illegal to deny non-UK companies the opportunity to work on these public projects.

There is a very simple, but very expensive appeals procedure against trademark registrations, unfortunately its very easy to register a trademark as long as its not a generic name (in our trade someone once tried to register the work "time" in their trading name), but very expensive to dispute it, in our example it took a High Court action to suspend the trademark and then finally quash it.

Like Britain's libel tourism laws, trademark and patent law brings the law into disrepute. I mean, there are companies who try to claim proprietary rights in a particular shade of orange, for example, or ownership of a particular common-or-garden word. Just like megalith companies who crush fledgling competitors by massacring them in patent litigation.

And then there's the husband-and-wife catering business that has had two trailers at the Excel for a decade or so, being told that they can't have them there during the sporting event that shall not speak its name.

They have to store them somewhere else, at their own cost. And no compensation.

Just so crummy McDonalds can have a monopoly on selling their 'food'.

Someone remind me how this is benefitting the country – including small businesses.