AT&T and Verizon on Wednesday decided to put an end to the legal battle underway over Verizon's "There's a map for that" ad campaign.
This comes after the Federal Court declined an appeal from AT&T to stop Verizon from airing its commercial which AT&T claimed was misleading the TV viewers. The next round of hearing is supposed to be held on December 16.
The lawsuit filed by AT&T has attracted a lot of attention and debate. While the general consensus has been that the ads do portray the ground realities, neutral observers including the Federal Court judge saw merit in AT&T's claim that the ads were misleading the viewers into thinking that AT&T did not have data and voice coverage outside their 3G network.
We had earlier written about the merit in AT&T's argument since the company's 2G coverage was as good as Verizon's 3G network and AT&T's much ridiculed poor connectivity has solely been because AT&T subscribers, mainly iPhone users, have been consuming data at disproportionately higher levels.
While AT&T did take the legal route in trying to stop Verizon from airing the ads, the company also decided to "set the records straight" from their end by airing their own counter-ads. These ads have been largely ineffective and have failed to gain customer sympathy. The only recourse could have been a judgement in their favor from the Courts.
So why is AT&T dropping the lawsuit then? While both the companies have declined to comment on the issue, it is probably because AT&T wanted to get a court ruling before the main shopping season during Thanksgiving got underway. With the Court failing to deliver what AT&T expected and with Thanksgiving already behind us,AT&T probably does not see sense in pursuing Verizon over a lost cause.
Meanwhile, Verizon celebrated AT&T's decision to drop the lawsuit by releasing yet another commercial attacking Ma Bell. Watch it below
[via Silicon Alley Insider]
ATT dropped the silly lawsuit because it had ZERO legal merit, and had ATT continued there was a strong chance Verizon would have won a motion to dismiss hearing and ATT would likely have been liable for Verizon's lawyer bill. The smart move for ATT was to drop the lawsuit. The smarter move would have been to never file the silly suit in the first place.
Verizon's ad campaign is a home run for them – it clearly stays within applicable law (which is all Verizon is required to do), and it makes ATT look like the lesser cell phone company. That specific facts and details may (MAY) indicate otherwise is irrelevant – these are commercials, not detailed and balanced analyses or encyclopedia articles. Comparative advertising means highlighting the strengths of your products while highlighting the contrasting weaknesses of your competitions. That's exactly what Verizon did.
ATT could have hit Verizon back with smarter ads highlighting their speed, the value of their network, whatever ATT thinks are their strengths – instead of Lukie flipping 2G postcards, which I still don't really understand. ATT's silly suit only added further fuel to the fire and made ATT look like a sore loser by resorting to (pathetic attempts at) legal tactics, which clearly backfired.
Well said