MASTERCARD International has slapped HBO with a $15 million lawsuit for copying its “Priceless” ad campaign to promote the cable series “Arliss.”
Recent print ads for the comedy that appeared in newspapers and magazines 052 . 0007.02listed prices for what a sports agent can make by signing a No. 1 draft pick, landing
the best arm in baseball and negotiating licensing deals. It calls “Having no scruples: priceless.”The ads, which appearedin TV Guide and The New York Times from May 17 through June 6 also say: “There are some men money can’t buy. Arliss isn’t one of them,”
“Arliss,” stars Robert Wuhl as a greedy sports agent, who usually ends up talking his way out of tight situations.
The controversial ads were timed to run when the show kicked off its fourth season two weeks ago.
MasterCard has spent more than $300 million on the world-wide campaign which features advertisements with characters ranging from kids who are going to their first major league baseball game to Fred Flintstone.
The 18-month-old campaign usually lists the costs of things you can buy with the card, but ends with an experience that cannot be defined by money.
In the lawsuit, MasterCard accuses HBO of “knowingly and willfully misappropriating” its copyrights and trademarks.
Since the MasterCard campaign broke, there have been other parodies on comedy shows ranging from David Letterman’s “Late Show” and Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show,” to “Saturday Night Live,” but so far only HBO has drawn the attention of MasterCard’s legal department.
“Those parodies were done in an entertainment context,” said Larry Flanagan, 052 . 0002.09MasterCard’s senior vice president of North American marketing.
“What we object to is taking the idea without any attribution to MasterCard and applying it to another brand.”
An HBO spokesman said the “Arliss” parody is not an infringement.
“We think our ads are clearly a parody and are a permissible form of creative advertising,” said HBO’s Henry Gomez.
“Our issue is that they’ve misappropriated the use of our campaign exclusively to build their business,” Flanagan said. “We’ve invested a lot of money into the campaign and we can’t let other brands come in and think that they are going to ride the coat-tails of something very successful that we’ve built.”
This isn’t the first time HBO has parodied of a popular commercial in order to promote one of its shows. A spots plugging HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live” have been patterned after Apple computer commercials and the new Volkswagen Beetle commercials.
052 . 0000.00 00000