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Driven by the evolution of technology and social media, brand advertisers are increasingly turning to “native advertising” — a form of paid media in which promoted content is woven into the actual visual design, or fabric, of a website, magazine, or newspaper. The theory is that by providing ads in the context of a user’s experience, and designing content that blends in with the media in which it is placed, the promoted content is less intrusive, and more likely to capture the attention of consumers.

Of course, because native advertising necessarily blurs traditional lines of editorial and advertising content, regulators have begun to more closely scrutinize the practice, and have expressed concerns about the potential for consumer deception. Earlier this year, for example, the National Advertising Division (“NAD”) examined a campaign from Qualcomm, in which it ran banner ads for its Snapdragon processor adjacent to a series of articles that it had sponsored on the Mashable website. For the duration of the campaign, the banner ads included a tag indicating that Qualcomm had sponsored the articles. Once the campaign concluded, however, the tags were removed (even though the articles remained live on Mashable).
Continue Reading BLURRED LINES: The Evolution of Native Advertising

Over the last few years, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) has continued to press forward with its efforts to increase the number of generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”). Although ICANN believes this expansion will increase competition and choice in the domain name space, various groups, including advertisers, have lingering concerns that the expansion will further erode Internet security and force them to incur significant expenses to protect their brands. In an attempt to address these concerns, ICANN has implemented a limited number of protection mechanisms. However, these protection mechanisms are only available to those who register their mark(s) in the Trademark Clearinghouse, a global repository of trademark data that launched on March 26, 2013. Thus, in the midst of an expansion that is already riddled with uncertainties, brand owners are now faced with the difficult task of trying to assess the value of ICANN’s unproven protections, and determining which marks, if any, are worth registering in the Trademark Clearinghouse.
Continue Reading A Prerequisite for Protection – ICANN’s “Trademark Clearinghouse”