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The Federation of International Football Associations has come under criticism over its enforcement policy with regards to the wording "2002 FIFA World Cup Korea Japan," whereby its is restricting non-commercial public organizations and even the government from using them. The Korean Consumer Protection Board tried to put a placard on its headquarters on May 10, saying "Special Consumer Counseling for Foreigners During the World Cup Games," but was prevented from doing so by FIFA.
The board was told to drop "the World Cup Games" as it had no affiliation with FIFA and so replaced the sign with "Special Consumer Counseling for Foreigners."
The Federation of World Cup Cultural Citizens Campaign was also told by FIFA to drop "World Cup" from its name earlier in the year, but after the intervention of the Korea World Cup Organization was allowed to use it unofficially.
Early this year the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, responsible for the games was cautioned about using a placard saying "2002 World Cup and Busan Asian Games," by FIFA, which insisted "World Cup" could not be used with any other expression.
So far FIFA has issued cautions in more than 100 cases, of which up to 20% were non-commercial according to KOWOC. The government and FIFA signed an agreement in August 1999, which gave the international body complete rights in endorsing all World Cup related terminology.
Park Seong-ho, an Intellectual Property Rights lawyer said there was no problem for public organizations to use the terms for non-commercial purposes in Korean law, as there was no problem with confusion over copyright. Park said FIFA was acting excessively in this regard.
(Baek Seung-jae, whitesj@chosun.com )
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