The British airports operator BAA is planning to spend 1.5 billion pounds to build a new Heathrow terminal to replace its oldest facilities, in time for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Terminal 2 and office buildings, which opened 50 years ago, are earmarked for demolition to allow building on Heathrow’s second major new terminal in five years, to start in 2009.
But according to reports the whole project could be derailed by a lengthy public inquiry that put back the building of Terminal 5 by ten years.
Meanwhile the advertising industry is protesting the government’s proposed 2012 London Olympics intellectual property laws calling them “draconian, flawed and unwarranted”.
Marina Palomba, legal director at the Institute of Practioners in Advertising (IPA), has written to Department of Culture, Media and Sport Minister Richard Caborn to lobby for the legislation to be scrapped. She said the laws, due to come into effect next spring, would introduce a “very restrictive IP right to protect official sponsors”.
“The law also reverses the standard presumption of innocence under English law by presuming advertisers guilty unless and until they can demonstrate they are not associating with the Games”, said Palomba.
Palomba argues the laws would prohibit advertisers from using words like “summer”, “bronze” and “2012” in certain combinations.
According to the IPA, organizing committees for the Turin and Vancouver Winter Games and the Beijing Summer Games had met or exceeded marketing revenue targets without introducing similar legislation.
