3 Count: Advertising Wars

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1: Amid Cuts, Photographer Sues P&G Over Copyright

First off today, Alexander Coolidge at Cincinnati.com reports that area photographer Annette Navarro has filed a lawsuit against consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble (P&G) over the use of her images in advertisements and packaging for P&G products.

The lawsuit is over images that were taken by Navarro and used by P&G in packaging, mostly for the Oil of Olay product line. According to Navarro, she licenses her images for years at a time and within certain geographic boundaries, two restrictions that she says P&G has broken.

According to Navarro, P&G has paid the modeling agency she hired but not her. She claims to have rejected one payment proposal saying that P&G was not honest about where and when her images were being used. The lawsuit comes amid severe cuts by P&G to their hefty marketing budget, cuts that directly impact providers such as Navarro.

2: Distractify Accuses 22 Words of Stealing Its Viral Facebook Posts

Next up today, Gene Maddaus at Variety reports that the social media aggregator Distrctify has filed a lawsuit against fellow aggregator 22 Words accusing it of stealing dozens of viral facebook posts.

The lawsuit, filed against 22 Words parent company Brainjolt, alleges that the site has been taking Distractify’s viral posts and then manipulating/republishing them. After doing so, 22 Words will then outbid Distractify for advertising on social media sites, making it so that it’s their version that’s more visible to users.

However, the issue it bathed in complexity as much of Distractify’s content is simply headlines and other material repurposed from other sites, including Buzzfeed and Reddit. Also, 22 Words never wholly copied Distractify’s content, instead modifying it slightly. This has led some to wonder how 22 Words is committing copyright infringement if Distractify isn’t, setting up for what could be a very interesting case.

3: Pirate Sites Ordered to Pay $1 Million in Damages to ABS-CBN

Finally today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that Philippine media giant ABS-CBN has one 19 separate $1 million judgments pirate site operators. However, collecting on that award may be very difficult.

The lawsuit was filed in April against a variety of online streaming sites that specialize in Philippine content. However, none of the sites turned up in court forcing the judge to enter a default judgment against them. Interestingly, the bulk of the damages $1 million per defendant, were for trademark infringement, not copyright. However, the judge did order the defendants to pay an additional $30,000 for copyright infringement.

However, collecting on these judgments will be difficult considering that most of the defendants weren’t even identified. ABS-CBN also secured an injunction on the websites domains but they did not seek one against the advertisers, something they had done in previous cases.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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