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How is this legal?!

Maclver

Maclver

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 23, 2008
2,873
2,685
New Mexico
Ok.. I saw the new T-Mobile commercial with the odd looking girl being a t-mobile phone and the guy the iPhone... It is a complete carbon copy of the Mac Ads.. Is that even legal? Why doesn't Apple do something...

Im just watching the AMAs and bored so wanted to discuss this!
 
Two reasons:

1. They have no creativity of their own.
2. They are riding the coattails of something that is proven successful.
 
Watabou said:
Two reasons:

1. They have no creativity of their own.
2. They are riding the coattails of something that is proven successful.
Click to expand...

You missed the big one. They are poking fun at Apple. If it was any other company they were going up agaist they would not run those ads. Those ads are known to be apple ads. So nail the iPhone and AT&T that way.

Just like Verizon A map for that it making fun of the iPhone and AT&T.
 
Well the part about those that really get me is AT&T has more people covered under HSPA+ than T-mobile, and how they can get away with calling it 4G is beyond me.
 
I doubt it. Its like trying to sue FOX for reporting on the same story as CNN.
 
Maclver said:
isn't there some kind of copyright laws when it comes to marketing?
Click to expand...

Copyright applies to any kind of original work, not just marketing. But marketing ads certainly qualify as original work, and are therefore protected by copyrights. However, copyright protection applies only to specific expression and not to ideas. So yes, someone can copy the basic idea of the Apple Mac vs PC ads, and use it in their own ads. It'd take something really blatant, like copying Apple's ad word for word, in order to get slapped down with a copyright suit.
 
Maclver said:
Ok.. I saw the new T-Mobile commercial with the odd looking girl being a t-mobile phone and the guy the iPhone... It is a complete carbon copy of the Mac Ads.. Is that even legal? Why doesn't Apple do something...

Im just watching the AMAs and bored so wanted to discuss this!
Click to expand...

Why wouldnt it be?
 
grapes911 said:
Even if copyright did apply here, they might be able to could claim fair use for parody purposes.
Click to expand...

This, along with the fact that it would be hard for Apple to claim legal ownership of "two people discuss a product in a white room".
 
Would be hard to prove in a court of law, and I also think T-Mobile's attempt to rename their network is pathetic. What happens when they deploy their next generation network?
 
I haven't seen the commercial with the odd looking girl yet, but I have seen one with a really hot girl :D
 
goobot said:
It is funny cause everything in that commercial is bs. They just renamed their 3G network to 4g.
Click to expand...

I don't get all this advertising regarding "4G". Since when is 3MBps not fast enough for a cell phone? And I'd rather have 3G and great coverage than "4G" and horrible coverage.
 
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