BuyMusic's Copying Of Apple's Ads: Flattery Or Theft?

from the will-it-backfire? dept

When BuyMusic.com launched, I saw that their ads were exact replicas of Apple's iTunes "random person singing along with their favorite tune" ads, and thought it was a bit silly. BuyMusic claims that it's meant to be "a compliment to Apple", but others are wondering if it's opening them up to a copyright or trademark infringement lawsuit. I certainly wouldn't put it past Apple to sue on this. However, I'm not so sure it makes sense. First of all, I think most people who see the ads, will actually assume they are for iTunes, and not even notice that they're advertising BuyMusic.com instead of iTunes. Thus, the ads won't do much good for BuyMusic, but might just confuse people. Second, I wonder if the folks at BuyMusic are hoping Apple will sue. In some ways, it could be a marketing campaign. A lawsuit from Apple will lead to lots of free press about BuyMusic.com, and so maybe they've actually budgeted out some sort of expected legal settlement fee as a marketing expense. Buy.com is known for their extreme marketing techniques, so I wouldn't put this totally beyond them. Getting sued as a marketing strategy was tried by a few companies during the boom years, so maybe we're just back to that.

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