Online Brand Fraud Poses Challenge To Marketers

Marketers say they are seeing an increase in online brand attacks driven by the down economy, according to a study by the Chief Marketing Office Council.
The study of 306 markets, sponsored by MarkMonitor, found that 29.5 percent of marketers are reporting a greater number of incidents of online brand fraud.
Study respondents said brand value, trust, integrity and reputation are being significantly damaged because of gray market knock-offs, phishing attacks, cyber squatting, email scams, trademark abuse and copyright/patent infringements.

TV Still Video King, YouTube Still Hulu’s Daddy

According to Nielsen, almost 99 percent of the video watched in the US is on a television. That leaves 1.1 percent for the Internet, and 0.1 percent on mobile devices.

In fact, though video viewing online and on mobile is increasing dramatically, neither medium is taking away from TV. Americans are actually watching more TV than ever and just adding online viewing to their schedules.

That’s bad news for gyms, eh?

EFF Posts Gripe Site Legal Guide

Because copyright and trademark lawyers have had such itchy trigger fingers when it comes to issuing DMCA takedown notices, there’s a lot of confusion out there what exactly constitutes infringement, and what webmasters can and can’t do with intellectual property.

Part of the problem is that websites hosting other people’s content—YouTube, Blogger, eBay, etc.—remove the content at the slightest whiff of a DMCA notice to avoid trouble. This leads, of course, to abuse and to targets without any great recourse.

EBay Pressures Senate To Outlaw Minimum Pricing

eBay, Burlington Coat Factory, and the US Federal Trade Commission are pressuring the US Senate to pass a law banning vertical price-fixing, effectively overturning a 2007 Supreme Court decision.

Manufacturers and retailers actually call it vertical “retail price management” (RPM). The practice entails setting a minimum price retailers can sell specific items for. Remember last Christmas, when you spent hours online comparative shopping only to find out everybody who carried it was selling it for exactly the same price?

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