I wrote recently about image rights protection for the Bird’s Nest (the Olympic Stadium here in Beijing). That issue has yet to be resolved and has both the legal department of BOCOG and the IOC scratching their heads.

Here’s another one, this time involving the deal between Sohu.com and BOCOG on the Beijing Olympics web presence.

Competition in China’s booming Internet sector has turned nasty ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with Sohu.com upsetting its rivals through a lucrative sponsorship deal that is now being challenged.

The Chinese portal paid a reported 30 million dollars in 2005 for the rights to set up the Games website for the Beijing Olympics organising committee and to use the logo of the event — the signature silhouette of a dancing man.

However it has since put the squeeze on rivals by claiming the deal included exclusive rights to host all the advertising by Beijing Games sponsors bearing the official logo.

This would give Sohu.com an effective Internet monopoly on ads by firms such as Adidas, Volkswagen, Johnson and Johnson and Bank of China, and its rivals are fuming.

The organising committee’s legal department is now working to untangle the affair that could determine who gets millions of dollars in advertising revenue between now and the August Games.

It could also give an invaluable boost in the broader Internet advertising sector, which marketing analysts iResearch believes will be worth more one billion dollars this year, up nearly 40 percent on 2006.

Sohu.com said its rivals feel they cannot allow the firm to gain an edge through its Olympic deal.

"In China the Internet industry is very tough and the competition will do whatever it can to fight this deal because they know it’s a big one," said Chen Luming, Sohu.com vice-president and chief of its Olympic business division.

He said that Olympic sponsorships were tailored to exclusivity, which accounted for the growing success of the marketing programme of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and of the Beijing organising committee, known by its initials BOCOG.

But Internet sponsorship is a new category, introduced for the Beijing Olympics for the first time, and the exact extent of the rights enjoyed by the holder have yet to be clearly defined, according to BOCOG.

I think Sohu is overreaching here quite a bit, and I’m surprised that BOCOG hasn’t made up their mind(s) yet. We’ll see what happens, but I think I agree with the guy at Tom.com, who said that "The claim about exclusivity on advertising has no basis… It would be like saying that all Olympic sponsors in the US would have to put their TV ads on NBC." Seems like the IOC agrees, so you gotta wonder what is going on behind the scenes here.

Not sure if there is more info on this at the moment. I just saw this AFP wire story, but I’ll keep my eyes open.