OTTAWA - Olympics. Olympic Games. Whistler Games. Medals. 2010. Vancouver. Gold. Silver. Bronze.

The news article you're reading can use such words with reckless abandon, without risk of legal action for trademark infringement.

But a new federal trademark bill designed to protect words and symbols connected to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics doesn't offer many other exceptions.

Comedians and satirists aren't explicitly exempted in the bill. Neither are documentary filmmakers or musicians.

Nor are artists who might want to take the graphics of the Olympic rings or Vancouver 2010's Inukshuk and use them in their works.

All this is causing some serious hand-wringing among free-speech advocates.

Gordon Duggan, founder of the coalition Appropriation Art, says the federal bill sets a dangerous precedent in favour of a corporate special interests.

Duggan points out that from time immemorial artists have used existing art to build a new work, collage being a prime example. But as fears about the vagueness of Canada's copyright legislation mount, he says more and more art galleries are already refusing to hang such artworks for fear that they'll have crippling lawsuits on their hands.

"Freedom of expression is one of the prime rights of the Canadian citizen and to have an exception for a sporting event or to have it compromised for a sporting event that occurs every 20 years seems a very odd thing,'' Duggan said.

The bill was introduced earlier this month by Industry Minister Maxime Bernier in an attempt to protect Olympic trademarks from being abused by businesses trying to enjoy a free ride on the publicity around the games, referred to as "ambush marketing.'' Some businesses spend considerable amounts of money for the right to associate their names with the Olympics.

Stores and companies that already had the name Olympic in their title or in their products before the bill is passed won't be pursued in court. But all bets are off when and if the legislation passes.

The legislation also goes a major step further than existing laws by removing the requirement for the Canadian Olympic Committee or the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) to prove that they've suffered irreparable harm when requesting an injunction against a company or individual.

Ottawa copyright expert Howard Knopf says not many companies -- or artists surviving on grants for that matter -- have the gumption to go up against the Olympic committee.

"Irreparable harm is one of the pillars of normal laws and they're bypassing that,'' said Knopf, an intellectual property lawyer.

"It raises serious issues of fairness and rule of law, and I don't see why in the world they've shown they're somehow above the law that everybody else has to obey.''

But Bill Cooper, director of commercial rights management for VANOC, says the scale of the Olympics requires greater protection for the large investments companies make to support the endeavour.

He said the committee has no intention of going after artists, writers or other Canadians.

"For us to stage a spectacular games like we've set up as our mission and our objective, we unequivocally need the artistic community, the media and all the other communities like that heavily engaged,'' Cooper said. "It would not be in our interest at all to stifle that expression.''

Cooper added the limited list of exemptions -- for news reporting, criticism, a person's name, their address -- is vague enough to cover a number of endeavours.

Still, similar exemptions in the Copyright Act have created headaches in the past.

A high-profile federal court case in 1996 specifically found that parody does not qualify as criticism under Canada's Copyright Act. Humorists who made short digital films on the Internet using the symbols of the 2008 Beijing Games were recently told to cease and desist.

Knopf said the mere fact the Olympic bill makes a limited number of specific exceptions is taken in the legal world to mean that everything that falls outside of the list is free game for litigation.

"There's a long and difficult history here, and anyone familiar with the Olympic culture in Canada and their propensity for aggressive litigation has to be very wary of what's going to happen, because if you give them an inch, they'll take a kilometre.''