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Is there a legal, cognizable claim for a consumer who was misled by a movie trailer? Perhaps. In June 2022, two Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Universal concerning a movie they streamed titled Yesterday which is owned by Universal.  Woulfe et al v. Universal City Studios LLC et al., 22-cv-00459, ECF No. 83 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 20, 2022).  Prior to streaming, the Plaintiffs watched the movie trailer, which featured actress Ana De Armas.  In the complaint, Plaintiffs alleged they were persuaded by the trailer, and De Armas’ role in particular to stream the movie.  However, De Armas’ character was cut from the final version of Yesterday, so she was not featured in the film whatsoever.  The Plaintiffs alleged they would not have rented the movie had they known De Armas would not appear in the movie. The Plaintiffs then sued Universal under a host of consumer protection violations, including a violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, California Consumer Legal Remedies Act, and California False Advertising Law. Continue Reading Can Movie Trailers Be False Advertisements? One Court Says, Maybe.

Federal Trade Commission

The week and a half proceeding the Thanksgiving federal holiday was busy for the Federal Trade Commission. Not only did the Commission release yearly updates such as its Fiscal Year 2022 Agency Financial Report and National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2022, it also filed three complaints, an amicus brief and announced an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking. The Bureau of Consumer Protection has been busy in November and focused on many false advertising and deceptive business practice issues. These stories, plus more, after the jump.Continue Reading FTC Updates (November 14-23, 2022)

Federal Trade Commission

The FTC had another light week as the Commission celebrated the anniversary of President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy. The Associate Director of the FTC’s Division of Financial Practices testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security about the FTC’s efforts to address fraud against the military community. These stories and more after the jump.Continue Reading FTC Updates (July 11-15, 2022)

Choose Your Breakfast Cereal!

A new trend in false advertising lawsuits targets specific characterizing flavor claims on the labels of foods and beverages. For example, Frito-Lay was recently sued in California federal court alleging the company’s “Tostito’s Hint of Lime” tortilla chips falsely implies that natural lime is a primary flavoring ingredient and that consumers were misled by various misrepresentations of lime on the product packaging. Kellogg, Hershey, and Bimbo Bakeries were all sued because the “fudge” in their respective products allegedly are produced with vegetable oil substitutes instead of butter and milk, which the complaint alleges is known to consumers as the traditional way of making fudge.

Typically, in these false or misleading flavoring ingredient lawsuits, a plaintiff attempts to represent a class of consumers and alleges they were charged a premium price for the products because of the specific ingredient, based on the misleading representation.  The plaintiff generally must also allege that they would not have purchased the product in the first place if they had known that the specific ingredient was missing.Continue Reading Despite the Pandemic, Food-Related False Advertising Lawsuits Continue to be Frequent Filers

In a recent Law360 article titled, “Navigating NFT Brand Management Risks And Rewards,” David Ervin, Kayvan Ghaffari and Carissa Wilson explain what brand and business owners should know about NFT opportunities and corresponding risks, particularly with respect to trademark, licensing, anti-counterfeiting and advertising law.

Click here to read the full article.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) hit the scene in 2017 with CryptoKitties, a game on the Ethereum blockchain for buying, selling, and breeding digital cats. Clearly, CryptoKitties represents a humble start for NFTs, the technology that has since captured astonishing public and media attention. More recent NFTs—like the NFT-based digital artwork by Beeple that sold at Christie’s for $69 million last month—demonstrate the rising importance of these novel digital assets.

Each NFT is a one-of-a-kind digital information file typically associated with a digital image, like an artwork, video, gif, tweet, or even event ticket. At least in theory, NFTs can also be created for physical objects, a possibility just beginning to gain meaningful attention.

Where associated with a digital image, the NFT does not generally contain the image but functions like an integrated smart contract with a link to the image file. This smart contract uses blockchain technology to track changes in ownership and affirm authenticity, much like a digital provenance. NFTs also contain a feature that can disseminate royalties whenever the NFT is sold, exemplifying the design flexibility and diverse functionality of these assets.

NFTs are a new form of non-tangible property with substantial implications in the art, entertainment, fashion, and marketing/advertising realms. Individuals and businesses operating in these spaces should carefully consider the merits of NFT platform or portfolio ownership and should anticipate new applications of and perhaps changes to existing bodies of law, like copyright and false advertising, that will address NFT issues.
Continue Reading NFT Risks and Opportunities in the IP, Advertising, and Brand Management Spaces

The DNR Tattoo

Last week, the Associated Press reported the fascinating story of an unconscious man admitted in acute distress to Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital. The words “Do Not Resuscitate” were tattooed across his upper chest, where one would see them before engaging in chest compressions. He carried no identification, so the medical staff could not reach his next of kin. A decision had to be made immediately, however: do we attempt to revive him?

© Getty Images

If doctors took the tattoo at face value, the patient would die. If they rejected the literal words, reading ambiguity into it (perhaps it was merely the result of youthful indiscretion), he might live. The stakes could not have been higher. “We’ve always joked about this, but holy crap, this man actually did it,” said the attending ER physician. “You look at it, laugh a little, and then go: Oh no, I actually have to deal with this.” Fortunately, Jackson Memorial has an ethics team on call for these kinds of situations, and after swift consideration, they recommended that the doctors honor the man’s tattooed request — they allowed the man to die.

Apparently, this is not the first DNR tattoo story. An author in the Journal of Internal Medicine writes of a patient admitted to the hospital for serious surgery, who had the letters “D.N.R.” tattooed on his sternum. When interviewed as part of preoperative procedure, he indicated that he in fact did want to be resuscitated if he went into arrest during surgery, contrary to what was written on his chest. He explained that he acquired the DNR tattoo after losing a drunken poker bet. The author dryly remarks, “It was suggested that he consider tattoo removal to circumvent future confusion about his code status.” The patient declined, however, saying that “he did not think anyone would take his tattoo seriously…”

Can Advertisers Be Taken at Their Word?

The tattoo story has me thinking about its application to advertising. In our line of work, we are frequently confronted with ad copy that expressly says one thing, but arguably implies something else. Indeed, most comparative advertising disputes arise from this kind of situation. The advertiser has carefully crafted a claim, believing it to be truthful and well substantiated. A challenger argues that the literal words may be true, but that the claim also implies something different, and that the different implication is false. Very few sophisticated advertisers are careless or unscrupulous enough to communicate literally false claims. Arguing about implied claims is where the action is.

Continue Reading “Do Not Resuscitate”: Lessons for Advertisers

You may have seen the commercial on late night television. A glowing image of a human brain appears (along with a disclosure stating “dramatization”), with flashing lights pulsing through a crisscrossed mesh, depicting nerves. The voiceover intones, “Your brain is an amazing thing. But as you get older, it begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness or even trouble with recall.” So far, so good. Who, of a certain age, hasn’t experienced these symptoms?

The voiceover continues: “Thankfully, the breakthrough in Prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory.” The flashing lights grow stronger and zoom more quickly across the neural net. “The secret is an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish. In clinical trials, Prevagen has been shown to improve short term memory. Prevagen, the name to remember.”

A screen shot of the key frame, showing a graph of what appears to be recall improvement over time appears, along with a disclosure that states that “in a computer assessed, double-blinded, placebo controlled study, Prevagen improved recall tasks in subjects.”

© Prevagen

Continue Reading Quincy Biosciences: What the decision means for advertising of health claims, and what it means to the FTC

© iStock

Earlier this month, the Northern District of California dismissed FTC’s unfairness claims against D-Link, a manufacturer of routers and IP cameras, while allowing most of FTC’s claims rooted in deception to survive, suggesting that traditional false advertising actions may be FTC’s most effective means of addressing suspect data security…

Baker’s dozen = 13 (not 12)

Easy.

Foot = 12 inches (the length of the average man’s foot)

Of course. I learned this in the second grade.

2 by 4 = 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches  

What?

4 by 4 = 3 ½ inches by 3 ½ inches

No way.

5/4 inches by 4 inches = 1 1/8 inches by 3 ½ inches

Mind. Blown… unless you’re a carpenter or in the construction industry.

In the United States, softwood lumber is governed by the American Softwood Lumber Standard which was developed by the American Lumber Standard Committee, in accordance with the Procedures for the Development of Voluntary Product Standards of the U.S. Department of Commerce. That’s a mouth full. However, the lumber standard is a government-approved codification of longstanding industry practices. And, while dimensional lumber is cut to a specific length, width, and depth, there is a difference between the nominal size (what the lumber is referred to) and its actual size.

Continue Reading Who “Wood” Have Thought? Plaintiffs Challenge Longstanding Lumber Labeling Practices