"enigma" wrote in message
. ..
Persephone wrote in
:

Sad to say, Scott's appears to have crushed Terracycle.
Or am I misreading the below? From what I see, Terracycle
agrees , inter alia, "not to claim that its products are
better than, or more effective than, or as good as
Miracle-Gro products."

Whatthehell? Since when can't a manufacturer say their
product is better than another??

you are not allowed to mention other products by name, since
at least the 1970s.


That isn't true, if it was it would be a violation of the 1st amendment.

What you aren't allowed to do is make concrete claims about
another company's products, unless you are merely repeating
the results of a peer-reviewed academic study that was done
which actually showed this - in which case your to refer to the
study, not state the claim as fact.

You also aren't allowed to use another company's trademarks
to sell your products without paying them, even if your unfavorably
comparing them, that is still using their trademarks without permission.
Such use in a commercial does not fall within "fair use"

The usual way advertisers get around this if they feel a compelling
need to make unfavorable comparisons to a competitor, is to
use testimonials. They find some Joe Citizen willing to go on record
saying nasty things about the competitors products and use the
testimonial in their advertising.

However, most advertisers believe testimonials relegates them to
the same group as the midnight Ginszu Knives As Seen On TV
crowd, and they also feel mentioning the competitor at all is just
giving free advertising to the competitor. That is why they usually
avoid mention.

Ted