We know you’ve missed us. Finals have been going on at New York Law School for the past few weeks. While we’ve been buried under studying, we thought we’d post some new material we’ve been working on for the end of the semester. We hope you enjoy… or at least find them very helpful!
The How-To page contains information that all lawyers interested in advertising, media, and social media law should be familiar with. More than that though, it contains information that anyone involved with an advertising campaign should be aware of. Take a look and let us know what you think.
By: Alanna Pittard
Woolrich Clothing Company was established 182 years ago and specializes in outdoor apparel. It has caused somewhat of a stir with its Men’s Elite Concealed Carry Chinos that have a special feature of concealing your everyday handgun and/or knives, if that tickles your fancy.
Woolrich designed the pants with an additional pocket behind the traditional front pocket, which is large enough to conceal a weapon. The company advertises the pants are “ideal for situations where discretion is important.” However, outside of undercover police officers, what other situations would these pants be ideal? Robbing a bank?
So who is the target audience here? Essentially, men who carry guns often enough to dress for the occasion such as undercover cops and NRA enthusiasts. Is this dangerous? Is there a way to have a screening process to require the customer’s handgun carry permit number in addition to his credit card number? Does this create an incentive for those who feel inconvenienced by their guns being too revealing to the public? Or does it create a new audience, like the young men of our generation who wear baggy jeans as means to conceal their weapons. Does it say a mere $65 will make ‘packing’ a lot easier?
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Left: Duracell Print Ad; Right: Duracell battery pack containing "misleading" claim
According to an article in PRWeb, Gillman Law LLP reported that a class action suit against Duracell for false advertising was filed on April 10, 2012, in the federal court in San Francisco, California. The complaint alleges that plaintiffs bought the significantly higher priced batteries on a “false promise” that they would last longer than the ordinary batteries, especially in children’s toys. Additionally, the complaint alleges that defendants Duracell, and it’s parent company Proctor and Gamble, engaged in a “scheme to mislead consumers”, and “concealed and misrepresented material facts” regarding their Ultra Advanced and Ultra Power batteries.
The packaging of the batteries in question featured the text “Up to 30% longer in toys” in bold lettering, with an asterisk to the disclaimer “vs. Ultra Digital” in much smaller print. According to the complaint, Duracell’s website stated that the Ultra Advanced batteries were “ideal for high-drain devices, these batteries give you up to 30% more power in toys than Ultra Digital batteries” and “use with high drain devices, including battery-powered toys, high-powered flashlights, and video game controllers.” Unfortunately, based upon plaintiffs’ experience (and their counsel’s investigation), the batteries allegedly failed to last materially longer than Duracell’s regular batteries. Therefore, the plaintiffs argued that Duracell mislead consumers into purchasing higher priced batteries.
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Gucci (bottom left); Guess (top right)
Guess stands accused of “a massive, complicated scheme to knock off Gucci’s best-known and iconic designs,” according to Louis Ederer, Gucci’s lawyer. For Italian fashion house Gucci, being imitated so deliberately is no compliment. The luxury powerhouse sued Guess and its exclusive licensee Marc Fisher Footwear for various claims including: trademark counterfeiting, trademark infringement, trade dress infringement, false designation of origin and trademark dilution. Gucci is seeking over $124 million in damages. The trial began on March 28, 2012 before Judge Shira Scheindlin and is expected to last 2 weeks.
According to the complaint, Guess is accused of engaging in “studied imitations” of Gucci’s registered trademarks including: its green-red-green stripe design, repeating interlocking GG design, interlocking GG design, stylized G design, and script G design. Read more
To everyone who participated and attended the Advertising, Media, and Social Medial Law group’s Spring Rush industry event yesterday. The event was a huge success! Please stay tuned for more content including posts, how-to’s, and events from Ad Nauseum. As always, please feel free to contact us at AdNauseumNYLS@gmail.com or follow us on twitter @AdNauseum_NYLS.
- NYLS Advertising Job Track.
By: Sumit Pathak
Jeremy Lin is no Yao Ming, but he is the new Yao Ming. He’s shorter than Yao and American, yet he stands taller than Yao. After being pulled off the bench in a desperate move to replace an injured teammate, Lin was thrust into the NBA limelight as a starter. If not for his recent injury, Lin’s feats and his monumental fan base would define the Knicks. 
If you heard of Yao Ming’s popularity in China, then it might not surprise you that the country is equally, if not more, obsessed with Jeremy Lin. You could go so far to say that China seems to be suffering from “Linsanity.”
It didn’t take long before Lin’s success gave rise to a ridiculous number of puns. Although we could have a whole discussion on the tastefulness of most of these puns, a greater concern arose from the number of people who planned to profit from Lin’s newfound fame.
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By: Alanna Pittard
When media and advertisements exploit the divide created by economic inequality, it will likely generate resistance from the public. This brings us to the issue at hand: a Pakistan designer duo, Sana Safinaz, considered one of the prominent names in luxury fashion in their country, raised heated online controversy in response to posting its most recent ad campaign for its Spring/Summer 2012 “Lawn” line on Facebook.
In the advertisements, the model is wearing Sana Safinaz designer Lawn from the collection, and is surrounded not only by Louis Vuitton luggage, but by several porters who could only dream of affording something so far out of their economic reach. With such a palpable disparity between the target affluent consumers represented by the model, and the low-income workers, these men simply act as the background in the ad, which I suppose, trees would also suffice.
And uproar transpired on Twitter and Facebook involving numerous tweets and comments in response to the ad, the majority of which were negative. One Facebook post read, ‘I just find this very offensive…and without any purpose…why must poverty and squalor be used as a backdrop to enhance the brand?’ Not all responses were negative. Some viewers defended the designers as not exploiting the vast economic gap in Pakistan, but addressing the reality of the country. Further, some viewers felt Sana Safinaz’s decision to create such an advertisement is permitted by the freedom to speak freely and express their ideas as creative designers.
This leaves us with the question: “how far is too far?” Is it permissive to include in an advertisement the factory workers who actually construct the handbags being modeled by the new face of Gucci? Without knowing the intent of the designers, one can only assume the purpose of advertisements is to gain exposure of the product to the public and future customers. In that respect, Sana Safinaz was successful.
By: Sumit Pathak
On one side we have Pinterest: a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. It basically allows you to organize your photographic or image-based findings on the Internet, with controls over with whom and how you share them on your virtual pinboard.
On the other side we have the copyright zealots: forums and platforms like the Artists’ Bill of Rights (ABoR) are strongly against the misuse of copyrighted materials or the monetization by vendors of materials developed by other individuals or organizations.
In this battle, Pinterest has essentially become the scapegoat for all current and future businesses that might have a business or operating model that depends on users posting materials that might have copyrights held by others. The ABoR are miffed over the initial boilerplate language used by Pinterest’s Terms of Service that included a list of rights the user grants, including Pinterest’s right to “sell.” Tumbr had suffered a similar outcry until they changed their Terms of Service to something more plain English and explained that it was merely giving the company legal protection in case it does sell something. Read more
By: Sumit Pathak
Twitter has been on a roll lately, launching initiatives to compensate for its earlier monetization issues. Just last month, Twitter announced a new program for small businesses in partnership with 
American Express (and their merchants) where about 10,000 card-members and merchants would receive $100 in Twitter ads. This should bring an excited barrage of ads from smaller businesses, chains, and lesser known brands. You may be familiar with Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, Trends, and Profiles, for large companies. Any small businesses interested in participating in this advertising campaign can use the pay-per-follower model for Promoted Accounts or per engagement (click, retweet, reply, and favorite) for Promoted Tweets.
Knowing the popularity of Twitter and its effect on news and media, I have no doubt that advertisers and businesses will seize the opportunity to utilize this option. But to me, this brings up another issue.
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Late last week the Internet search giant Yahoo! announced it would implement a ‘do not track’ tool across websites hosted on its networks. Great! What does that mean? Well, for the average user it means that he or she will now have the option of controlling what information websites like
Yahoo can collect, and what those sites in turn do with that data. This is one of Yahoo’s answers to the concern over consumer privacy, and addresses the growing fears that consumers have little to no control over personal information gathered by their movements on the web.
Consumer privacy protection has been the talk of the town lately in Washington. Last week the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report to Congress on privacy in the digital age. In the FTC report, the Commission expressed its frustration over privacy violations and took the further step of calling on Congress to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. A main focus of the FTC report revolved around the suggestion that private data collectors develop a ‘do not track’ function to give consumers the ability to limit what information is collected and stored. This is obviously big news for advertisers and may impact businesses that rely solely on advertising revenue to operate.
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