Organizers of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games have been hit with a law suit, while reports of contaminated seafood and pet food have led to a number of Chinese factories being certified to export kosher food products ahead of the 2008 Games.
Beijing’s official slogan is “One World, One Dream”. It was the final choice from among 210,000 proposals, although Liu Qi, Beijing Communist party head and BOCOG president said in 2005 “there was no single winner”.
But now a Beijing resident claims organizers violated his intellectual property by failing to give him credit for the slogan.
According to the Financial Times Fang Shouwei says he has evidence that he proposed the English-language phrase “One World One Dream” to BOCOG after it issued a global appeal in 2005 for an “emotional and inspiring” new slogan. He said Wednesday, “since 2005 I’ve been trying to protect my rights. Protecting the fruits of my labour is an expression of the Olympic spirit of openness, fairness and justice”.
Organizers originally promised to issue a certificate of recognition to the person whose slogan was chosen.
Wang Zhenyu, Fang’s lawyer, said his client had notarized evidence that he had submitted the slogan to BOCOG by e-mail during the campaign. The Financial Times reports that repeated court attempts to mediate between Fang and BOCOG had failed and he was now suing the committee for a certificate of recognition and for his legal costs.
Meanwhile, as the 2008 Games grow closer, the Associated Press reports that Beijing’s only kosher restaurant which opened 10 months ago is doing such good business that Lewis Sperber, part owner of Dini’s Kosher Restaurant, is talking about setting up a second branch closer to the Olympic venues in northern Beijing hoping to benefit from the 550,000 foreigners expected to visit the Games in August.
The word “Kosher” is attributed to food that meets Jewish dietary laws. There is now reportedly a real boom in the number of Chinese factories being certified to export kosher products, partly driven by recent food safety scares in China involving contaminated seafood, pet food and toothpaste.
Minette Ramia, who manages Dini’s said, “from the hygiene side, whether someone is kosher or not, Jewish or not, people will want food from here because it is considered cleaner and more hygienic being that we’re in China”.
Rabbi Mordechai Grunberg, who examines Chinese factories for the Orthodox Union said, “the fact that there is another set of eyes coming through the plants on a regular basis – such as the Kosher auditing or Kosher supervisors, means that the companies, the factories, are more careful about hygiene and sanitation”.
