Practice Areas & Industries: Winston & Strawn LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview
Consumer product companies and advertising agencies make daily decisions that impact what the public sees, hears—and buys. Such highly visible choices demand legal counsel with focused experience in this field. Winston & Strawn is one of the few large law firms in the country with a practice group dedicated to advertising, marketing, and promotions. The four lead attorneys in the group collectively have practiced in this area for more than 100 years. Their wealth of knowledge about the marketing side of business translates into legal advice that helps you achieve business objectives.

Services Available

The firm’s advertising, marketing, and promotions practice serves clients in connection with advertising substantiation, FTC review and counseling, sweepstakes and promotions counseling, NAD and network concerns, talent and sponsorship contracts, privacy law issues, and trademark and copyright review and litigation.

For each client we represent in this area of the law, we establish a streamlined channel of communication to ensure ready access to our attorneys.  We take ownership of each client's legal issues and provide solutions that make sense in the context of the client's operations rather than providing discrete answers to individual questions.  When a client comes to our advertising attorneys with a particularly challenging matter, we find creative solutions to help the client accomplish its goals.

Representative Matters

Advertising Contracts
Over the years, our attorneys have represented major advertisers, celebrities, writers, and ad agencies parties in drafting and negotiating numerous marketing-related contracts.      
 
Advertising Challenges
Winston & Strawn's advertising practice represents clients before the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and its appellate body, the National Advertising Review Board.      
 
Bacardi Youth Targeting Litigation
Bacardi USA, Inc., Bacardi Limited, Baca
Winston & Strawn represents Bacardi U.S.A., Inc., its parent Bacardi, Ltd., and various other corporations in the Bacardi family in nine putative class action suits brought by parents of underage consumers who bought alcohol beverages prior to turning 21. Among other claims, the plaintiffs allege that beverage alcohol manufacturers have “targeted” underage consumers with marketing designed to make drinking more attractive. We have obtained dismissals, with prejudice, of the actions in Colorado, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The courts in these cases ruled that the alcohol advertisements were legal when shown to of-age adults, that the ads do not state that underage consumers can purchase or consume      
 
Charles Hunt, Terry Johnson et al. v. PepsiCo, Inc. and BBDO Worldwide, Inc.
BBDO
We represented PepsiCo, Inc. and BBDO Worldwide, Inc. in a lawsuit brought by the Flamingos, a 50s rock band, involving our clients’ use of the Flamingos’ version of “I Only Have Eyes for You” in a 1997 Superbowl commercial.      
 
Eastman Kodak Memory Card Litigation
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company We are currently representing the Eastman Kodak Company in a state court class action in San Francisco. The plaintiffs are challenging representations made by Kodak regarding the storage capacity of memory cards and digital cameras.      
 
Frito-Lay, Inc. Case #4270 regarding Lay’s Stax Original Potato Crisps
Frito-Lay, Inc.
Winston & Strawn represented Frito-Lay Inc. in a false advertising challenge by The Procter & Gamble Company before the National Advertising Division (NAD) regarding the taste preference claim, “America Prefers the Taste of Lay’s Stax Original Potato Crisps over Pringles’ Original Potato Crisps.” Frito-Lay introduced Stax in September 2003 to directly compete with Pringles, which is one of P&G’s largest brands with more than $1 billion in annual sales. The NAD held that Frito-Lay’s claim was substantiated and that P&G’s taste test was not sufficiently reliable to rebut Frito-Lay’s evidence.      
 
Kevin Trudeau v. George Lanoue
Trudeau Kevin
We represented Kevin Trudeau in a lawsuit brought in the Northern District of Illinois against George Lanoue alleging trademark infringement and violation of the Federal Annual Cybersquatting Act.      
 
Stuczynski v. The Dickinson Family, Inc.
The J.M. Smucker Company
We represented an affiliate of The J.M. Smucker Co. in a consumer class action claiming, among other things, violations of Sections 17200 et seq. and 17500 et seq. of the California Business and Professions Code.      
 
Verizon Directories Corp. v. Yellow Book USA
Verizon Communications
Winston recently garnered successful results for Verizon Communications in connection with a suit seeking an injunction prohibiting Yellow Book from continuing a nationwide advertising campaign that Verizon alleged was false and misleading. After a three-week bench trial in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Weinstein ruled that Yellow Book had violated the Lanham Act and New York state law by making false claims that more people use the Yellow Book than use the yellow page directories published by Verizon Directories Corporation. The parties later settled the damages phase of the case, which was scheduled for jury trial in December 2004.      
 
Zenith Electronics Section 17200 Matter
Zenith Electronics Corp
We represented Zenith in a multi-party action this past year alleging that our client included false and misleading information on the packaging of MP3 players because it listed the megabyte and gigabyte capacity of the product in a metric rather than binary format After engaging in law-and-motion and limited discovery, we were able to obtain a favorable settlement for our client.      
 
Game Prize Giveaway Class Actions
McDonald's Corp.
Our attorneys represented McDonald's in consumer class actions brought in federal and state courts across the country related to allegations of wrongdoing in connection with McDonald’s Monopoly and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game prize giveaways.      
 
Mail-In Rebate Litigation
Motorola, Inc.
Our attorneys obtained early dismissals of consumer class action and personal representative lawsuits against Eastman Kodak Company and Motorola, Inc., and 20 other major manufacturers. These lawsuits alleged that the 1970 California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1750 et seq.)outlawed the manufacturer mail-in rebate and demanded that the manufacturers immediately cease and desist from offering mail-in rebates in California and pay millions in restitution and damages.      
 
Barr Laboratories, Inc. v. DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company
Barr Laboratories, Inc.
We represented Barr Laboratories in litigation against DuPont claiming that DuPont illegally monopolized the market for warfarin sodium and violated the Lanham Act in its advertising and promotion. After defeating DuPont's motion to dismiss, which was based partly on First Amendment grounds, and winning key rulings forcing the defendant to turn over its sales force database, Barr was able to obtain a settlement worth over $100 million.