ABA's Private Advertising Committee: program announcement

I have been following with great anticipation the new ABA Antitrust Section’s Private Advertising Committee, a committee focused on false and deceptive advertising and marketing issues and litigation developments. Interested folks can join the Committee, sign up for programs and/or sign up for the discussion email list at this link.

It’s a good moment to mention the new committee, because it, along with the Civil Practice and Procedure, Economics and Trial Practice Committees, are sponsoring a teleconference:

Damages in Lanham Act False Advertising Cases: Theory and Practice

November 24, 2009, 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET

Panel summary: The Lanham Act provides for a variety of remedies against false advertising. Although injunctive relief is most common, damages, fees and costs can also be awarded. What measures of damages are available? What factors, other than falsity of the claims, must a plaintiff establish in order to obtain damages? What role do presumptions play in winning damages? Is any showing of causation required, and if so, how does one prove causation where advertisers themselves often have difficulty determining the effectiveness their ads?

This telephonic brown bag program will provide an overview of the legal bases for the award of money to prevailing parties under the false advertising provisions of the Lanham Act. The panel will survey the legal underpinnings of damage claims and discuss key cases in which damages were awarded, and denied. The panel will then provide a practical overview of how damages can be proved or rebutted through expert testimony in a hypothetical case.

The panelists are:

Christopher Cole, Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP

Professor Ravi Dhar, George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing & Director of the Center for Customer Insights, Yale University School of Management

T. Christopher Borek, Ph.D., Managing Principal, Analysis Group

Chris Cole will moderate. Recordings of this Brown Bag will be posted on the Section website Members Only area following the program and downloadable in an MP3 format, free of charge.