Opinion ID: 1274444
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Internet Advertisements

Text: We have made clear that a district court must examine not only the words, but also the visual images . . . to assess whether [the advertisement] is literally false. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 241 F.3d at 238. It is uncontroverted that the images used in the Internet Advertisements to represent cable are inaccurate depictions of the picture quality provided by cable's digital or analog service. The Internet Advertisements are therefore explicitly and literally false. See Coca-Cola Co., 690 F.2d at 318 (reversing the district court's finding of no literal falsity in an orange juice commercial where [t]he visual component of the ad makes an explicit representation that Premium Pack is produced by squeezing oranges and pouring the freshly-squeezed juice directly into the carton. This is not a true representation of how the product is prepared. Premium Pack juice is heated and sometimes frozen prior to packaging.). DIRECTV does not contest this point. Rather, it asserts that the images are so grossly distorted and exaggerated that no reasonable buyer would take them to be accurate depictions of how a consumer's television picture would look when connected to cable. Consequently, DIRECTV argues, the images are obviously just puffery, which cannot form the basis of a Lanham Act violation. Notably, TWC agrees that no Lanham Act action would lie against an advertisement that was so exaggerated that no reasonable consumer would rely on it in making his or her purchasing decisions. TWC contends, however, that DIRECTV's own evidence which indicates that consumers are highly confused about HD technologyshows that the Internet Advertisements pose a real danger of consumer reliance. This Court has had little occasion to explore the concept of puffery in the false advertising context. In Lipton v. Nature Co., 71 F.3d 464 (2d Cir.1995), the one case where we discussed the subject in some depth, we characterized puffery as [s]ubjective claims about products, which cannot be proven either true or false. Id. at 474 (internal quotation marks omitted). We also cited to the Third Circuit's description of puffery in Pennzoil Co.: Puffery is an exaggeration or overstatement expressed in broad, vague, and commendatory language. `Such sales talk, or puffing, as it is commonly called, is considered to be offered and understood as an expression of the seller's opinion only, which is to be discounted as such by the buyer. . . . The `puffing' rule amounts to a seller's privilege to lie his head off, so long as he says nothing specific.' Pennzoil Co., 987 F.2d at 945 (quoting W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 109, at 756-57 (5th ed.1984)). Applying this definition, we concluded that the defendant's contention that he had conducted thorough research was just puffery, which was not actionable under the Lanham Act. See Lipton, 71 F.3d at 474. Lipton 's and Pennzoil Co. 's definition of puffery does not translate well into the world of images. Unlike words, images cannot be vague or broad. Cf. Pennzoil Co., 987 F.2d at 945. To the contrary, visual depictions of a product are generally specific and measurable, id. at 946, and can therefore be proven either true or false, Lipton, 71 F.3d at 474 (internal quotation marks omitted), as this case demonstrates. Yet, if a visual representation is so grossly exaggerated that no reasonable buyer would take it at face value, there is no danger of consumer deception and hence, no basis for a false advertising claim. Cf. Johnson & Johnson  Merck Consumer Pharm. Co. v. Smithkline Beecham Corp., 960 F.2d 294, 298 (2d Cir.1992) ([T]he injuries redressed in false advertising cases are the result of public deception. Thus, where the plaintiff cannot demonstrate that a statistically significant part of the commercial audience holds the false belief allegedly communicated by the challenged advertisement, the plaintiff cannot establish that it suffered any injury as a result of the advertisement's message. Without injury there can be no claim, regardless of commercial context, prior advertising history, or audience sophistication.); see also U.S. Healthcare, Inc. v. Blue Cross of Greater Philadelphia, 898 F.2d 914, 922 (3d Cir.1990) (Mere puffery, advertising that is not deceptive for no one would rely on its exaggerated claims, is not actionable under § 43(a). (internal quotation marks omitted)). Other circuits have recognized that puffery can come in at least two different forms. See, e.g., Pizza Hut, Inc. v. Papa John's Int'l, Inc., 227 F.3d 489, 497 (5th Cir.2000). The first form we identified in Lipton a general claim of superiority over comparable products that is so vague that it can be understood as nothing more than a mere expression of opinion. Id. ; see Lipton, 71 F.3d at 474. The second form of puffery, which we did not address in Lipton, is an exaggerated, blustering, and boasting statement upon which no reasonable buyer would be justified in relying. Pizza Hut, Inc., 227 F.3d at 497; accord United Indus. Corp. v. Clorox Co., 140 F.3d 1175, 1180 (8th Cir. 1998) (Puffery is exaggerated advertising, blustering, and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely and is not actionable under § 43(a). (internal quotation marks omitted)). We believe that this second conception of puffery is a better fit where, as here, the statement at issue is expressed not in words, but through images. The District Court determined that the Internet Advertisements did not satisfy this alternative definition of puffery because DIRECTV's own evidence showed that many HDTV equipment purchasers are confused as to what image quality to expect when viewing non-HD broadcasts, as their prior experience with the equipment is often limited to viewing HD broadcasts or other digital images on floor model televisions at large retail chains. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 475 F.Supp.2d at 307. Given this confusion, the District Court reasoned that consumers unfamiliar with HD equipment could be led to believe that using an HD television set with an analog cable feed might result in the sort of distorted images showcased in DIRECTV's Internet Advertisements, especially since those advertisements make reference to `basic cable.' Id. Our review of the record persuades us that the District Court clearly erred in rejecting DIRECTV's puffery defense. The OTHER TV images in the Internet Advertisements areto borrow the words of Ronald Boyer, TWC's Senior Network Engineerunwatchably blurry, distorted, and pixelated, and . . . nothing like the images a customer would ordinarily see using Time Warner Cable's cable service. Boyer further explained that the types of gross distortions shown in DIRECTV's Website Demonstrative and Banner Ads are not the type of disruptions that could naturally happen to an analog or non-HD digital cable picture. These advertisements depict the picture quality of cable television as a series of large colored square blocks, laid out in a grid like graph paper, which nearly entirely obscure the image. This is not the type of wavy or snowy picture that might occur from degradation of an unconverted analog cable picture, or the type of macro-blocking or pixelization that might occur from degradation of a digital cable picture. Rather, the patchwork of colored blocks that DIRECTV depicts in its advertisement appears to be the type of distortion that would result if someone took a low-resolution photograph and enlarged it too much or zoomed in too close. If DIRECTV intended the advertisement to depict a pixelization problem, this is a gross exaggeration of one. As Boyer's declaration establishes, the Internet Advertisements' depictions of cable are not just inaccurate; they are not even remotely realistic. It is difficult to imagine that any consumer, whatever the level of sophistication, would actually be fooled by the Internet Advertisements into thinking that cable's picture quality is so poor that the image is nearly entirely obscure[d]. As DIRECTV states in its brief, even a person not acquainted with cable would realize TWC could not realistically supply an unwatchably blurry image and survive in the marketplace. In reaching the contrary conclusion, the District Court relied heavily on the declaration of Jon Gieselman, DIRECTV's Senior Vice-President of Advertising and Public Relations. However, Gieselman merely stated that the common misconception amongst first-time purchasers of HD televisions is that they will automatically get exceptional clarity on every channel just by plugging their new television sets into the wall. Nothing in Gieselman's declaration indicates that consumers mistakenly believe that hooking up their HD televisions to an analog cable feed will produce an unwatchably distorted picture. More importantly, the Internet Advertisements do not claim that the OTHER TV is an HD television set, or that the corresponding images represent what happens when an HD television is connected to basic cable. The Internet Advertisements simply purport to compare the picture quality of DIRECTV's programming to that of basic cable programming, and as discussed above, the comparison is so obviously hyperbolic that no reasonable buyer would be justified in relying on it in navigating the marketplace. Pizza Hut, Inc., 227 F.3d at 497. For these reasons, we conclude that the District Court exceeded its permissible discretion in preliminarily enjoining DIRECTV from disseminating the Internet Advertisements.