A BEWDLEY author has defied the London 2012 organising committee by keeping the word Olympic in the title of a book he has written.

Robert Ronsson said he gave his teenagers' adventure story the title, Olympic Mind Games, completely unaware of any possible controversy.

When the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games - LOCOG - discovered Mr Ronsson's intention, they informed him they had copyrighted the word, Olympic, following the award of the games to London.

The LOCOG even contacted the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland - IOC - when Mr Ronsson argued a book title was not subject to copyright. The IOC disagreed with him.

Mr Ronsson said: "This is a word we are talking about, not a product. It's been in the English language for 400 years. You can't stop people using it."

Publishers, Pen Press, agreed with Mr Ronsson and went on with printing the book.

Fran Edwards, media adviser for LOCOG, said: "We have to protect the rights of our sponsors, who pay us considerable amounts of money to have exclusive rights to an association with the Olympic brand."

She said it was "disappointing" Mr Ronsson had gone ahead with publication but, "given the small number of books published, it would be disproportionate to take a heavy handed approach".

She added: "We will now contact Mr Ronsson again to discuss our ongoing concerns and endeavour to reach an amicable solution."

Mr Ronsson said: "From one point of view, this whole issue has been good for publicity but I still wish LOCOG would admit they got this all wrong."

He confirmed he was already working on a sequel, which will not have the word Olympic in its title or take place in the Olympic village.

He added: "There will be four books in the series though and I wouldn't be surprised if the last one took place in 2016, another Olympic year."

Olympic Mind Games tells the story of 13-year-old Jack Donovan, who is the only person to know the world is in terrible danger.

It is available in bookshops and from on-line booksellers.