Announcing the Second Edition of “Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases and Materials” by Tushnet & Goldman

advertising book cover 2014Rebecca Tushnet and I are pleased to announce the release of Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases and Materials, second edition (2014). It’s available at Gumroad as a $11.50 DRM-free download (PDF version / epub mobile device version) and other outlets. You can read a free sample chapter, Chapter 13 (Featuring People in Ads). As usual, if you are a professor, or are hoping to teach the course, and would like a free review copy, please email me.

About the Book

This book is a major project that Rebecca and I have been working on for more than a half-decade. The book is nearly 400,000 words and generously spiked with photos, charts, diagrams, screenshots and other reader-friendly features. The PDF is over 1,400 pages long. The book chapters:

Preface
Chapter 1: Overview
Chapter 2: What is an Advertisement?
Chapter 3: False Advertising Overview
Chapter 4: Deception
Chapter 5: Omissions and Disclosures
Chapter 6: Special Topics in Competitor Lawsuits
Chapter 7: Consumer Class Actions
Chapter 8: False Advertising Practice and Remedies
Chapter 9: Other Business Torts
Chapter 10: Copyrights
Chapter 11: Brand Protection and Usage
Chapter 12: Competitive Restrictions
Chapter 13: Featuring People in Ads
Chapter 14: Privacy
Chapter 15: Promotions
Chapter 16: The Advertising Industry Ecosystem–Intermediaries and Their Regulation
Chapter 17: Case Studies

What’s New

Over the past 2 years, we’ve spent a LOT of time updating the book. Rebecca did the lion’s share of work in light of my schedule limitations due to my wife’s health, but I spent a month updating the book too. Collectively, we made many hundreds (likely thousands) of changes throughout the book, from big to small. For example, my 2013 students provided me with hundreds of comments and suggestions (I asked them to provide weekly feedback on the casebook). Rebecca and I reviewed every single one of them to decide if and how to address their comments.

We moved some material into a new chapter, “Other Business Torts.” We rewrote or heavily edited other chapters. For example, we took a hatchet to Chapter 2, “What is an Advertisement?” We trimmed the chapter down substantially, including major surgery on the way-too-long Nike v. Kasky ruling. We also did a major revamp to the privacy chapter, which still remains a work-in-progress but I think is more teachable now. I’m especially excited about the materials associated with Snapchat’s consent decree, which I think offers a useful case study of an FTC enforcement.

We also updated cases and notes throughout the book. In particular, the 2014 edition addresses this year’s two Supreme Court cases on false advertising, the Lexmark and Pom cases.

In my post announcing the first edition, I said I felt the book was “only about 90% done.” The book will forever be a work-in-progress, and I’m sure you’ll find dozens or hundreds of typos, broken links, formatting mistakes and other fit-and-finish imperfections. Still, I think this edition fixes many of the roughest edges left in the 2012 edition. I’m excited to share this more polished edition with you.

If You Are Teaching (Or Want to Teach) Advertising Law

For more on why you should consider teaching an advertising law course, see this post. In addition to a complimentary book copy, we can help you with:

* a rudimentary teacher’s manual
* access to the Georgetown Intellectual Property Teaching Resources database, with digitized props galore
* our PowerPoint slide decks and lecture notes plus other materials, such as the various exercises we’ve used

If you want to create a new course, we can help you prepare your draft syllabus and course proposal. Email me!

You can see more stuff, including syllabi and old exams, on my Advertising Law course page.

About Self-Publishing

Once again, we are self-publishing the book electronically. Last time, we principally used Scribd, but in the interim I’ve dumped Scribd permanently. This time, we’re principally using Gumroad, a self-publishing platform that takes a nominal transaction fee and has a smooth/elegant buying experience.

It’s 100% clear now that we won’t publish the book through a traditional publisher. We’ve seen how the pricing of dead-tree casebooks has spiraled out of control, and we’ve seen the legacy publishers respond to student demand for electronic casebooks with high pricing and odious DRM. By self-publishing, we retain the copyrights, we can issue DRM-free electronic versions, and we can keep the price at a trivial fraction of prevailing casebook pricing. At Forbes, I analyzed the economics of our self-publishing. As you can see, we think we did OK at our low price point compared to the royalties we’d get from a traditional publisher.

This year, we are finally rolling out a mobile device (epub) version, also available at Gumroad for $11.50 and in a Kindle version (a little cheaper because Amazon doesn’t allow a price greater than $9.99). We benefited from tireless and pain-staking efforts of Susanna McCrea, Georgetown Law’s faculty manuscript editor, to prepare the epub version.

We are also hoping to offer a hard copy option, but I haven’t yet found a print-on-demand publisher who can handle a 1,400 page book. If you have any recommendations, please share them.

[Sept. 22, 2014 UPDATE: We’ve made a hard copy purchase option available, but it required breaking the book into two volumes. Volume 1 and Volume 2.]

What’s Coming

We have a lot more in the hopper. Later this year, we are going to launch a new book-related website, advertisinglawbook.com. The website will provide an audio-visual supplement to the book, including hosting or linking to video ads and the full-size version of display ads.

In addition, we’re going to start up a moderated email list for advertising law professors. I’ll seed it with the folks we’ve identified over the years as teaching the course or interested in doing so. If you would like to join the list, let me know.

Conclusion

Advertising law remains a hot topic in the business world, and it’s been gratifying to see Advertising Law courses proliferating throughout the nation. We’re glad so many of you have already found the book helpful to teaching your courses. Thanks for your continued support, and please call on us if there’s any way we can help. Finally, please share any comments you have about the book. We are constantly looking to make it the best it can be.