Lugz threatens legal action for Eminem iPod ad

OK. Seeing that everybody has chimed in I must as well. Silouetted Characters: Agree with Jamey. No connection there. Urban Environment: Lugz has a nicely illustrated city. Eminem is against what looks like faded photographs of where else? His hometown. The title of the ad is "DETROIT." The ad is actually about Detroit so the city background MUST Be 'N dA hiZ-oUsE. Dirty Red Orange Hue: This color palette is so disgusting. It should never be used again...ever, but oh it will. Orangey red is THE official mascot of youth street culture, perhaps because it signifies aggression. So this tasteless gradient is used in both ads. Big woop, it's used in e-ver-ry-thing. Grafitti Spatter: Pu-leeze! Which stereotypical urban environment isn't complete without grafitti? It HAS to be there. Sadly, it just does. Isn't it apparent that this commercial is the most evident formulaeic Apple, or more likely an Ad Agency rendition of "hiphop style." Lugz is kidding themselves if they think Apple is ripping them off.

in my previous post, i forgot to say that i was talking about the silouettes...but it's pretty clear...

if there's one thing we all must agree on it's this...the itunes commercial uses the same signature apple look, but in celebrity mode where you can kind of see detail. there's just NO friggin way this was made to emulate the lugz breakdancer.

Apple should just release the next ad. Same overall style, different color palette, maybe a different genre. That way they'll have a series of ads using the same style, but all unique from each other. And one just happened to look like the Lugz ad. You know, like the outline plan for all the ads was unique, and one of them happened to be similar to Lugz'.

So two adds are made with Urban Hip Hop themes using a similar colour scheme and that's where the similarity ends. If Lugtz think they own the colour orange and have exclusivity on Urban culture they can think again. take this one to court and lets see how stupid they will look.

Wow the Apple's ad and Lugz's ad are both so unique and similar - wait they're not! 1. Apple uses red-orange scales, Lugz uses brown-Orange scales. 2. Almost every peice of media that reps the streets uses the SAME COLOR TONE: NBA Street v3 for example... is Lugz gonna sue all of them???? 3. The ONLY similarity in the two ads is the orange and yellow color! The Lugz ad has arrows flying all over the place while someone is breakdancing, the Apple ad is a concert. Wow Lugz - you suck at sucking money. Your ad is just as similar to the Eminem ad as it is to the iPod Shuffle ad (arrows). They only have one minor thing in common... WTFrrrruk is wrong with you!

We live in a ridiculously litigious society, every company has lawyers at the ready to protect their Intellectual Property when they don't even understand what it means or why it exists. Most citizens are just as confused and can't help but be easily swayed by notions of piracy. In this case we have one commercial that looks very similar to another, they both use orange, they both use human silhouettes and a hip-hop soundtrack. Should a commercial be included as IP? So, who gets to own the rights to a car racing along a rain-soaked road? Or who owns the rights to see a car along a dry lake? Who owns the clever beer commercial with blondes in bikinis? Take it further, doesn't every landscape photographer owe Ansel Adams some money? Should Maplethorpe owe Steiglitz? Maybe any time a speach-writer includes 'forescore' they should send a dime or two to Lincoln's family. Do we really have to be worried about protecting every possible variation of art and media in order to protect ourselves from litigation. I can think of movies that riff on other movies, songs and poems and novels that borrow, beg, and steal from previous works, is this all over? Apple/Chiat Day should be more careful only to protect themselves, but Luqz is asking for something that they have no right to own. IP as copyright, trademark, etc. is almost completely broken at this point, and cases like this are merely a symptom of the gross misunderstanding about these very important ideas.

what? like the lugz ad wasnt a copy of the orignial ipod ads?

I loved the Apple ad, now I'm not so sure. Way too similar. They need to look into why this happened. Just so you know, I'm a hie-hard Mac-head, but that shouldn't prevent you from seeing the truth. This is what I would call out and out plagiarism.

The Lugz commercial is 3 years old, this shouldnt matter to them. It should matter to the artists that created the ad because its damn similar, but they could be stoked that Apple copied them or IT COULD BE THE SAME ARTIST. I dont really think Lugz is on Apple's radar to even bother copying or some channel on Steve's Tivo hasnt updated their advertising slots in eons. Similar sure, Apple being bandits no. Infringing on Lugz, no. Lugz wanting press space & recognition in the world in hopes to sell shoes, YES.