Bad Idea Central: Toyota Sued After Viral Marketing Attempt Convinced Woman She Was Being Stalked

from the who-comes-up-with-these-things? dept

Lots of companies are aiming to create all kinds of "viral advertising," and certainly automated "prank calls" that are really ads (often for movies) have become common in the last few years. But that doesn't do much to excuse Toyota's behavior. Apparently, the company put together a promotional campaign that allowed friends to freak out their friends, by convincing them they were being stalked. Here's how Toyota described it:

YourOtherYou is a unique interactive experience enabling consumers to play extravagant pranks. Simply input a little info about a friend (phone, address, etc.) and we'll then use it, without their knowledge, to freak them out through a series of dynamically personalized phone calls, texts, emails and videos. First, one of five virtual lunatics will contact your friend. They will seem to know them intimately, and tell them that they are driving cross-country to visit. It all goes downhill from there. The Matrix integrates seamlessly into the experience and you can follow the progress of your prank in real-time online. Each piece of the campaign assures that the experience is as Google-proof as possible.

Sound like fun? Not really. Especially not for Amber Duick, who "had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work" after receiving a bunch of phone calls from this prank, believing that some "lunatic" stranger was on his way from England to see her. At one point, she even received a bill from a hotel that this stranger supposedly "trashed." Har har. Buy a Toyota.

How does Toyota defend the campaign? By claiming that Duick agreed to it. How, you ask? Well, Toyota sneakily inserts "permission" into a personality test it sends the "victim" of the prank, from the "friend" who initiated it. It's difficult to see how that kind of agreement stands up in court. Hiding an agreement for something entirely different (and pretty damn creepy) inside the agreement for a personality test from a friend? How is that informed consent?

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Patent Holder Takes A Second Crack At Toyota Over Hybrid Technology

from the once-wasn't-enough? dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how Toyota had been stockpiling a ton of patents around hybrid vehicle technology, such that almost no other carmaker could make hybrid vehicles without paying up. Of course, there was some history to that story, as Toyota had lost a big lawsuit by a patent holder named Paice a few years back, requiring a fee to be paid on a bunch of Toyota hybrids. However, apparently that wasn't enough. Gary points out that, not only has Paice filed some new lawsuits over more recent hybrid Toyotas, it's also taking a separate crack at the issue via the International Trade Commission (ITC), an infamous loophole used by patent holders to get multiple cracks at a company over the same patent. The link above from Treehugger asks a question that plenty of folks following the patent world have been asking for years:

Here's a bit of a kicker: With the last suit, "Paice said the market for hybrid cars "did not take off" until Toyota "revamped its vehicle program" with technology Paice patented almost a decade earlier." So if a company has a technology that could be a huge boon for drivers and the environment and they sit on it for a decade, does a competing company that finally does something with it and makes it a success really need to be sued repeatedly for using it? Paice seems to be somewhat at fault for not being effective enough with a smart technology.

Indeed. This isn't a case of patents being used to enable innovation. It's a clear case of patents being used to hinder innovation -- and the patent holder seems to have no qualms about admitting that no real innovation happened until Toyota came along.

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How Toyota Is Using Patents To Slow The Growth Of Hybrid Vehicles

from the what-a-shame dept

Slashdot points us to a WSJ story about how Toyota has purposely built up a patent thicket so thick that basically no one can build hybrid vehicles without paying up:

Since it started developing the gas-electric Prius more than a decade ago, Toyota has kept its attorneys just as busy as its engineers, meticulously filing for patents on more than 2,000 systems and components for its best-selling hybrid. Its third-generation Prius, which hit showrooms in May, accounts for about half of those patents alone.

Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota, as Ford Motor Co. already did to make its Escape hybrid and Nissan Motor Co. has for its Altima hybrid.

Defenders of the patent system often say that there's no problem: others should just "invent around" the patents. But when companies create a patent thicket like this, that makes it effectively impossible. The end result? We all lose. This makes it that much more expensive and difficult for others to innovate, because they need to allocate money to Toyota, rather than to their own innovations. It slows down Toyota as well, since it's devoting so much time and effort to lawyers. And it massively slows down the market. Rather than competing on innovation and a better product, the focus is on patents. And since it slows down competitors it means Toyota doesn't need to innovate as fast either. In the meantime... not only does the economy suffer, but so does the environment.

Of course, we can't just blame Toyota for this. It's the system that created such a scenario. In fact, Toyota recently went through a long and arduous patent battle with someone else over patents held by that guy -- resulting in Toyota having to pay a tax on every hybrid it makes. So, perhaps it's no wonder that it's trying to gobble up as many patents as possible around hybrids, if only to have the necessary "stockpile" for future patent battles against competitors. Once again, it's the entire patent system that's leading to this questionable result that harms everyone... except the lawyers, of course.

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Lexus' Trial Balloon On Car Spam

from the oh-please-don't dept

Lexus has announced plans to roll out a system that will allow the company to send audio messages to its cars, which most people immediately realized meant we should get ready for spam in our cars. It's pretty obvious that's what Lexus is thinking when it says things like: "messages can be highly targeted, such as tailored for those who have a specific vehicle type or who live in a particular ZIP code." However, the company is obviously sensitive to the spam issue, saying that "We're not going to barrage customers with marketing messages," and noting that some may not want this: "Many of our owners enjoy their car as a cocoon." The whole thing sounds like a trial balloon idea to see how people react, and so far it doesn't sound good. You could see some potentially useful situation -- such as in the event of a recall, but the likelihood of someone in marketing getting a "brilliant idea" for some extra revenue and pissing off a lot of people just seems too high.

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Toyota Takes After Ford In Claiming Ownership Of Fan Photos

from the not-so-smart dept

You may recall that Ford has been rather aggressive in telling fans of various Ford cars that they have no right to create things like calendars from photos they, themselves, have taken. Basically, Ford has claimed ownership of any photos of Ford vehicles. That, of course, is crazy. But apparently the thinking extends to other car companies as well. Apparently, Toyota is now threatening a site that hosts various "desktop wallpapers" for computers because it offers up a variety of wallpapers made up of images of various Toyota automobiles.

TorrentFreak, who has written up the article, exaggerates a bit in claiming that this is the most "wildly arrogant" DMCA claim. After all, Ford did exactly the same thing earlier, and plenty of other companies have done similar things. Also, apparently Toyota hasn't actually invoked the DMCA yet, simply telling the site's owner he has to remove the images or it would send DMCA notices. Rather obnoxiously, when the guy who runs the site asked which images, specifically, violated Toyota's intellectual property, Toyota's lawyers responded that they would only identify them if the site's owner paid for their time. Of course, the DMCA actually requires you to name the specific infringing files.

You might possibly be able to make a case that Toyota could sorta maybe make a trademark claim here -- that some might assume that the desktop wallpapers were officially offered by Toyota, but that wouldn't explain why they're threatening to use the DMCA, which has nothing to do with trademarks.

However, most importantly, as we noted with the Ford situation, it makes no sense to beat up on fans of your products who are sharing photos of the cars they love and are actively promoting the cars for the automakers. It seems like yet another case where lawyers simply freak out without realizing how much damage they're doing to their client's brand. Update: Good news! In the comments, Ford claims that the earlier story was a misunderstanding (though, don't exactly explain how come it's happened multiple times) and Toyota has also apologized for the threat, saying that it was a mistake.

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Lexus Gets Into The Video Hosting Business...?

from the apparently dept

So, we were a little confused recently when Toyota sued a nude model for using the name Alexus, as it seemed difficult to believe there would be any "confusion" between the two. However, who knew that Lexus was getting into the entertainment business? We've talked in the past about BMW's famous BMW Films effort, as an example of how the future of advertising needs to recognize the blurring lines between content and advertising. In BMW's case, each film was directed by a famous filmmaker, starred actor Clive Owen, and included a BMW that tended to act as something of a co-star. The films were entertaining as pure content, rather than as traditional advertising.

Since then, we've seen plenty of other companies try similar things, with varying degrees of success. For example, the recent set of Microsoft ads involving Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates received a very mixed reaction -- in part because people expected them to be like traditional ads, pitching a specific product, rather than creating a story line that was entertaining in its own right.

Now, one of our readers, William Jackson, points us to an experiment apparently by the car company, Lexus (a part of Toyota). It's called L Studio, and appears to be something of a web video platform, showing a bunch of professionally produced videos. As Jackson notes, some of them do involve a Lexus, such as this documentary about an artist creating a piece of artwork out of a Lexus:

However, others seem to have absolutely nothing to do with Lexus automobiles at all, and often star recognizable actors, such as this video starring Famke Janssen trying to juggle her dating life with her dog: I'm sure some will complain that these sorts of videos don't make any sense, as they do nothing to promote the vehicles -- but it may be worth seeing where this campaign goes from here. Some of the videos are entertaining and help put Lexus' brand around "lifestyle" content, and that could get people to start associating the Lexus brand with a certain type of lifestyle. Sure, it might not be as "in your face" as sponsoring a TV show or doing product placement, but if the content is good and gets people to seek it out rather than intrude on what they're doing, this could be a very effective branding campaign.

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Can A Moron In A Hurry Tell The Difference Between A Nude Model And A Car?

from the I-would-hope-so dept

An anonymous reader sends in word of yet another highly questionable trademark infringement lawsuit, as Toyota, makers of Lexus vehicles has filed a lawsuit against a nude model, who goes by the name Alexus Winston (link is probably NSFW, depending on your work environment). As the folks at Fleshbot note: "Lexus is a line of luxury automobiles put out by Toyota. Alexus Winston is a naked model." Anyone want to volunteer to be the moron in a hurry to prove that it's rather easy to tell the difference between the two?

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Toyota Adds Solar Power To Hybrid

from the what's-wrong-with-wind-power? dept

Toyota, already considered a leader in producing hybrid gas-electric vehicles is apparently preparing to make that hybrid a bit more hybrid: it's going to add solar panels to some models, using the solar energy to power air conditioning. It's not much, but it's a start. I've actually been fascinated with solar vehicles since the fifth grade (yikes) when I convinced some engineers at GM to send me some cheap solar panels to build a tiny solar-powered car (Chrysler ignored my letter, Ford sent a form letter in response). While GM had invested in some prototypes and took part in various solar powered car contests, the technology has never been good enough to do very much at a practical level. Now, how long will it be until Toyota figures out a way to use wind power as well?

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