Madrid Man

None of your domains include the word Olympic or Olympics, so it would be difficult to argue that you were trying to benefit in any way from the Olympic bid or the Olympics themselves (if they happen) when you registered any of those domains. If you had madridolympics2012.com, well that would clearly be different, but you could have registered madrid2012.com to discuss the possibility of an earthquake hitting the city that year, or the premonition you had that Madrid would host the Eurovision Song Contest that year, or anything.

I have read of cases where certain URL’s have been deemed by the courts to infringe intellectual property rights, but these were usually specific to a person or company/brand with a well known name or TM, and which had been so prior to the registration of the domain. I don’t think either of those criteria apply in this case. You might be interested to know that the musician Sting failed in his attempt to capture the URL www.sting.com from its owner because the court ruled that the word ‘sting’ was common currency and did not belong exclusively to Sting the musician (aka Mr Gordon Sumner) - and quite right too!

Also, have you contacted the International Olympic Committee about this matter? If Madrid 2012 are seeking to strip you of your legitimate ownership of those domains by means of threat, coersion, defamation or whatever - ie. not fighting fair - then one would hope that the IOC would take a pretty dim view of this and it would at the least reflect badly on the city’s Olympic bid.

On a more general point, I think the Olympic games themselves are a bloated dinosaur that should either be severely slimmed down or laid to rest completely. They have assumed far more importance (at least, to politicians) than they are worth, and the costs considerably outweigh the benefits. I live in London, which unfortunately is also bidding to host the 2012 games - and I sincerely hope that it fails. I don’t know any Londoner who actually wants them here, because we all know that we’ll have to foot the bill through higher local taxes - for years - and they will cause us increasing disruption. And what will your average citizen get out of it? Absolutely nothing. Yes, certain businesses (in certain areas) will profit, and there may be some benefits for their employees, but the vast majority of Londoners will merely be footing the bill for a grandiose PR exercise and ego-boost for a handful of politicians. There - I feel better now!

Best of luck keeping your domain names Madrid Man!