According to reports, Beamon has complained to London bid leader Lord Coe, alleging that the publication breaches his image rights.
"I was surprised to see that you used my image to promote London 2012 without any consent or consultation," he said in a letter to Lord Coe, according to The Telegraph newspaper. "This is not just a discourtesy but is, I believe, a fundamental breach of an Olympian's right to determine how his or her name and image is used for promotional purposes."
He demanded that Lord Coe, who won four Olympic medals and set eight world records in middle-distance running in the 1980s, withdraw the brochure, issue a public apology and advise the International Olympic Committee that Beamon supports the New York bid, not London's.
To use a celebrity's image in an endorsement without permission can be an expensive mistake.
In the UK, racing driver Eddie Irvine's won a lawsuit in the High Court in 2002 after a promotional brochure was sent to less than 1,000 people advertising radio station Talk Radio, with a photo that had been doctored to show Irvine holding a radio bearing a Talk Radio logo, instead of a mobile phone, which he was holding in the original photo.
The photo of Beamon in the London brochure is well known: it shows his jump of 29ft 2½in in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, a jump that beat the previous world record by 21¾in and stood until 1991.
However, according to the Guardian newspaper, Sebastian Coe has now written back to Beamon, explaining that the brochure showed many pictures celebrating the Games' history, and also included pictures of other sporting greats, including Carl Lewis and Muhammad Ali.
"The photograph you refer to formed part of a montage of photographs celebrating unforgettable memories from Olympic history and does not associate you or the other Olympic legends in the brochure with supporting London 2012," he wrote, according to the Guardian. "I am, of course, aware that you are closely involved in New York's bid."
The IOC has just over a month in which to decide on the host city for the 2012 Games.
