Alison and Claire Egan gazed up at Barack Obama’s rugged, wind-swept image in Manhattan’s Times Square on Friday, snapping pictures of the giant billboard atop the Red Lobster restaurant.
The president looked pretty good in his casual cold-weather jacket, pronounced the tourists from Australia. But what, they wondered, was the leader of the free world doing modeling for an apparel ad?
“I don’t think it helps his credibility as a politician,” Claire said.
Of course, Obama wasn’t moonlighting as a model. The Weatherproof outerwear company had purchased an Associated Press photo of the president at the Great Wall of China, in which, to their great fortune, he was wearing their jacket. Without his permission, they built an ad campaign around it.
On Friday, after being contacted by the White House, the company pledged to take down the billboard — in about two weeks.
“We need time to create a new ad campaign,” Weatherproof president Freddie Stollmack said. “We can’t have an empty billboard.”
In the meantime, he said, the ad campaign had been “absolutely” the right thing to do.
Legal experts say the incident shows that even though Americans have the right to protect their image from unauthorized use, for the president, it’s trickier than most to pursue that right.
“The president probably has the narrowest ability of any of us to protect his image, because he’s the most public person,” trademark lawyer and intellectual property expert Anthony Biller said. “And even if legally he has a right to stop the purely commercial use of his image, does he create more harm by going after these people?”
There’s also federal legislation protecting the public against being misled by implied endorsement. The White House said earlier this week it was asking Weatherproof to remove the billboard because it implied Obama’s endorsement of the product.
The photo was taken by Charles Dharapak of The Associated Press and Weatherproof purchased the right to use it from AP Images.
The Egans from Australia weren’t bothered by the ad.
“We were just wondering how he’d look in Bonds,” they laughed, referring to a popular brand of Australian underwear.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
A rash of unexplained drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey has left locals rattled and sent US officials scrambling for answers. Breathless local news reports have amplified the anxious sky-gazing and wild speculation — interspersing blurry, dark clips from social media with irate locals calling for action. For weeks now, the distinctive blinking lights and whirling rotors of large uncrewed aerial vehicles have been spotted across the state west of New York. However, military brass, elected representatives and investigators have been unable to explain the recurring UFO phenomenon. Sam Lugo, 23, who works in the Club Studio gym in New Jersey’s Bergen
RSS