Posts Tagged: "false advertising"

Under the proposed order, the company is prohibited from claiming that any product is made in the United States unless that product is all or virtually all made in the United States. The company also is prohibited from making any misleading claims about a product’s country of origin and from providing deceptive promotional material to third-party retailers, or otherwise providing the “means or instrumentalities” for others to make deceptive U.S.-origin claims. The company also is required to contact all distributors who bought or received products between January 1, 2010 and May 1, 2013, and provide them with a notice and a copy of the order.

The firm is back at it again in 2013 taking on another alleged trademark scam operation after successfully prevailing in a similar claim just over 1 year ago against USA Trademark Enterprises. See Trademark Scammers Out of Business Thanks to Leason Ellis. In that case, 7:12-cv-0620 (SDNY), alleged that the defendants had engaged in false advertising and unfair competition by marketing a so-called “catalog” of trademark registrations. The case settled for $10,000, which the firm donated to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Thus, the defendants would do well to stand up and take notice. It seems that Leason Ellis is living by the the words that mark the youth of my generation — “We’re not gonna take it, no, we ain’t gonna take it, we’re not going to take it any more!”

Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. v. Play Beverages, LLC, et al., U.S. District Judge S. James Otero has granted the Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss on the basis of improper venue.

The Commission issued a Final Order that bars the POM marketers from making any claim that a food, drug, or dietary supplement is “effective in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease,” including heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction, unless the claim is supported by two randomized, well-controlled, human clinical trials. The Order also prohibits misrepresentations regarding any test, study, or research, and requires competent and reliable scientific evidence to support claims about the “health benefits, performance, or efficacy” of any food, drug, or dietary supplement.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton while there are similarities in the names of the digital application storefronts, Apple has not proved that Amazon has in fact tried to pass itself off as an official Apple app store. In her order to dismiss the claim, Hamilton wrote, “There is no evidence that a consumer who accesses the Amazon Appstore would expect that it would be identical to the Apple App Store, particularly given that the Apple App Store sells apps solely for Apple devices, while the Amazon Appstore sells apps solely for Android and Kindle devices. Further, the integration of Apple devices has more to do with Apple’s technology than it does with the nature, characteristics, or qualities of the App Store.”

An online advertising company agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it used “history sniffing” to secretly and illegally gather data from millions of consumers about their interest in sensitive medical and financial issues ranging from fertility and incontinence to debt relief and personal bankruptcy. The FTC settlement order bars the company, Epic Marketplace Inc., from continuing to use history sniffing technology, which allows online operators to “sniff” a browser to see what sites consumers have visited in the past.

The Clickbooth affiliate network has agreed to pay $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its affiliate marketers deceived consumers through bogus weight-loss claims on fake news sites about acai berry supplements and so-called “colon cleansers.” The FTC will seek to use the $2 million judgment announced today to provide refunds to consumers who were allegedly deceived by the defendants’…

The technology that involves cooling fact cells to reduce the amount of body fat is the center of a new trademark complaint. Zeltiq Aesthetics, Inc has filed a claim against Dr. Marco Hallerbach, MD, and Dr. Hallerbach & Associates, Inc. claiming that they are not only unlawfully using a procedure they own, but that in so doing they are infringing various trademarks owned by the company. The complaint was filed in the United States Federal District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division on October 9, 2012. Zeltiq also filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction simultaneous with the filing of the complaint, which requests an injunction to stop Dr. Hallerbach’s advertising and to prevent him from using any of Zeltiq’s trademarked products.

The two companies agreed to settlements with the FTC requiring them to stop making the allegedly deceptive claim that their Dutch Boy Refresh and Pure Performance interior paints, respectively, contain “zero” volatile organic compounds. According to the agency, while this may be true for the uncolored “base” paints, it is not true for tinted paint, which typically has much higher levels of the compounds, and which consumers usually buy.

Yesterday Leason Ellis announced that the case has been resolved with the signing of a consent decree and Settlement Agreement. Without a doubt this can be characterized as nothing short of a complete and total victory. The judgment was entered by the Hon. Edgardo Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Yet another ad that the FTC took issue with was one featuring celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Brooke Burke, which aired during the 2011 Super Bowl. In the ad Kardashian is showed dumping her personal trainer for a pair of Shape-ups. In the Burke ad consumers were told that the newest way to burn calories, tone and strengthen muscles was to tie their Shape-ups shoe laces. Clearly, the message is that you don’t need to work out if you wear Shape-ups, which turns out to be untrue. What a surprise! Frankly, I’m not sure that these ads deserved the ire of the FTC.

Yes, I had the audacity to say what is objectively correct. There is no absolute right under the First Amendment to engage in false or misleading speech. Despite the fact that this statement is legally 100% correct you would have thought I was engaging in treasonous behavior. What made it all the more comical was that it was the anarchists who seemed most upset, both in comments on IPWatchdog and in a variety of Twitter and blog articles that sought to paint me as some kind of crazy. You see the anarchists got so upset because the only play in their playbook is to lie and misrepresent in order to pull the wool over the eyes of enough people that they can get their way. That is where America is currently and if you ask me that is wholly unacceptable.

Who would not want to buy a sub or sandwich that looks like the subs that are shown on the Subway website, or those that are shown on their popular TV commercials? But who among us has ever received a sub or sandwich from Subway that looks anything like those that they promote in their advertising? I know that I have never once seen a sub like those. Simply said, based on my experiences it is my belief that Subway advertising is laughably misleading.