Highlights of the latest franchising cases from around the country.
Susan H. MortonDavid W. OppenheimFranchisor Had No Disclosure Obligation to Renewing Franchisee
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has affirmed a grant of summary judgment to a franchisor sued by its franchisee for failure to make disclosures required by New York law, breach of contract and fraud.
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The volume and sophistication of work hitting law firm marketing departments is accelerating. That moves the burden from responding to being ready: ready with differentiated positioning, ready with competitive intelligence, ready to get a compelling pitch to the right client before a formal process even begins. That requires more sophisticated output, produced faster, by teams that are already stretched past capacity.
In categories where products are difficult to differentiate on performance, and that describes most of the AI industry today, customers do not choose on features, they choose on trust. Brand integrity, in those markets, is a material business asset.
The annals of copyright decisions could provide a reasonably representative catalog of what our culture has been up to over the past 200 years. A Feb. 3 decision from the Southern District of New York is a case in point. It involves a sex-trafficking conspiracy, Tweets attacking a troubled crypto firm, and a claimed transfer of copyright ownership through a restitution order in a criminal case, all over an undercurrent of competing First Amendment and victim-privacy concerns.
Matthew McConaughey secured eight federal trademark registrations covering his voice and iconic catchphrases in a novel legal strategy aimed at combating AI’s unauthorized use of his voice and likeness. The move signals an important evolution in the power dynamics between talent/brands and the companies providing generative AI tools.
The use of AI does not alter fundamental obligations of accuracy, reasonableness and accountability. The legal risk lies not in the existence of hallucinations but in the failure to govern and verify them.
