About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

71 Trademark Rep. 620 (1981)
Comparative Advertising, Commercial Disparagement and False Advertising

handle is hein.journals/thetmr71 and id is 636 raw text is: Vol. 71 TMR COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING, COMMERCIAL DISPARAGEMENT AND FALSE ADVERTISING* By Jerome G. Lee** Introduction Advertising has become a glamorous multi-billion dollar business. It pervades society. This huge business is not without its share of legal problems and challenges from consumers, com- petitors, industry and government. Those contested areas where advertisers may overstep the bounds of fair play are the sub- ject of this article. They are: comparative advertising, commercial disparage- ment and false advertising. The differences in these areas are fairly clear. Comparative advertising is naming your competi- tor's product or service and saying yours is better. It is easily illustrated by the old slogan Anything his can do mine can do better. Commercial disparagement is simply knocking the other fellow's product. It is illustrated by the statement His is no good. False advertising is saying something wrong about your own product, i.e. Everyone prefers mine. A. Comparative Advertising: Anything His Can Do, Mine Can Do Better It is generally accepted that the popularity of comparative advertising started with the Avis WE TRY HARDER cam- paign.1 In that ad campaign, consumers were informed outright that Avis was number two in rental cars and asked to choose Note the following related articles in a special TMR issue--July-August, 1977- on Comparative Advertising: Stephen Nye, In Defense of Truthful Comparative Ad- vertising, 67 TMR 353; Albert Robin and Howard B. Barnaby, Jr., Comparative Adver- tising: A Skeptical View, 67 TMR 358; Stewart E. Sterk, The Law of Comparative Advertising: How Much Worse Is Better Than Great, 67 TMR 368; and Suzanne B. Conlon, Comparative Advertising: Whatever Happened to Brand X?, 67 TMR 407, and those articles cited therein and Nancy S. Greiwe, Antidilution Statutes: A New Attack on Comparative Advertising, 61 Boston University Law Review 220 (January 1981). * Based on an address given at the mid-Winter meeting of the American Patent Law Association, January 30, 1982, in Scottsdale, Arizona. ** Partner in the firm of Morgan, Finnegan, Pine, Foley & Lee, New York, N.Y.; President, New York Patent Law Association, 1980-1981; Associate Member of USTA. The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Margaret Ranft. Copy- right @ 1982 Jerome G. Lee. 1. See, Nancy Giges, Comparative Ads: Battles That Wrote Do's and Don'ts, Advertising Age 59 (September 29, 1980).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most