Adlaw News

• Wal-Mart Loses Trademark Battle Against Parodies

  May 5, 2008 - A federal court has ruled that a man’s use of terms such as “Walocaust,” and "Wal-Queda” to sell anti-Wal-Mart merchandise were parodies that did not infringe on the retail giant’s trademarks.

• Consumers Care About Green Claims, Surveys Report

  May 5, 2008 - Consumers tend to favor green goods and services—but also are increasingly skeptical about the environmental claims made by the companies selling those goods and services.

• Collectibles Site Sues Yahoo for Click Fraud

  May 5, 2008 - The operator of a website that sells collectible toys and memorabilia is suing Yahoo! for more than $1 million, claiming the fees the company paid to a Yahoo! affiliate for search advertising were inflated by hundreds of thousands of dollars because of click fraud.

• Verizon Sues Time Warner Cable Over Ad

  May 5, 2008 - The battle over fiber optic versus cable has moved from television to the courtroom. Verizon New York Inc. has sued the nation’s largest cable provider, Time Warner Cable, Inc., over advertisements the latter is running in the New York metropolitan area, claiming the ads amount to false advertising.

• FTC Obtains $28 Million in Alleged Telemarketing Scam

  May 5, 2008 - The Federal Trade Commission has obtained a $28 million judgment against the operators of an alleged nationwide telemarketing operation dubbed by the media as the “Wal-Mart Shopping Spree” scam. The amount awarded represents the net profits believed to have been generated by the operation, the FTC said.

• Government's War on the Web

  May 5, 2008 - A growing chorus of activists wants to tightly control online “behavioral marketing,” “advertising networks,” and “third party entities,” on the presumption that these compromise Internet users' privacy. These proposals are being driven by activist groups opposed to consumerism itself, and disdainful of the diversity of information choices on the Web.

• No 'blurry line' involved in Harry Potter copyright dispute

  May 5, 2008 - I take some issue with the story by David B. Caruso, published in the April 21 issue of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, headlined "Harry Potter case shows blurry line in copyright law." It really doesn't.

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Adlaw Features

• Policy Disagreements Between US and UK on Data Breach Notification

  May 5, 2008 - A recent UK government-sponsored publication suggests an important difference between UK and US data protection law on the issue of data security breach notification best practices.

Previous Features

• Court Ruling Extends Privacy Protection to Subscriber Data

  April 21, 2008 - The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled this week that, under the New Jersey Constitution, citizens have an expectation of privacy in subscriber data provided to Internet Service Providers (“ISP”). The case is significant because it departs from federal constitutional standards, and because it squarely holds that the right to privacy extends to subscriber data in the possession of an ISP.

• Seminars and Webinars on New Compensation Models for Actors in Television Commercials

  April 21, 2008 - Attend a seminar or participate in a simultaneous online webinar sponsored by Reed Smith and the ANA-AAAA Joint Policy Committee on Broadcast Talent Relations ("JPC"). The seminar and webinar will examine the two compensation models proposed by Booz Allen Hamilton for actors who perform in television commercials.

• Eight Ways to Minimize the Risk of Counterfeiting

  April 3, 2008 - Counterfeiting has been labeled the “Crime of the Twenty-First Century” by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and such emphasis is not overstated. The counterfeiting business constitutes a staggering 7 percent of world trade, and the global counterfeit market is worth about $600 billion, including a loss to U.S. businesses of about $250 billion per year.