Happy Saturday – What a week it’s been. Crypto is imploding, Elon is being Elon, and Season 3 of Love is Blind concluded. It’s a lot to take in.

My goal with this newsletter is to share with you some of the things I read as I stay on top of current issues and trends for my clients. 
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Here’s what I’ve been paying attention to over the last seven days:

New Lawsuits

  • EDM producer 3LAU, who famously generated more than $11M in revenue through selling his Ultraviolet album as an NFT, is being sued by Luna Aura, a singer who contributed to the track Walk Away. She claims 3LAU never paid her any portion of that revenue, despite their contract, which she alleges entitles her to royalties from those sales.
     
  • The Pennsylvania Attorney General has sued Fluent for deceptive lead-gen tactics, such as allegedly tricking consumers into providing “consent” to use of personal information by Fluent’s “marketing partners.”  
     
  • Off-grid vehicle maker Living Vehicle is suing influencers who claim LV’s trailers contained high levels of toxic chemicals, including “very high formaldehyde” that caused illness and rendered the trailers uninhabitable. 

    Living Vehicle says it has the evidence to prove there are no such chemicals in its trailers, so it’s suing the influencers for trade libel and business disparagement.

    This week, Living Vehicle filed its motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the influencers from making any additional claims about purported chemicals. 
     
  • Men’s Journal is being sued for copyright infringement for using a photo it allegedly found on the internet to advertise a shirt, without clearing the rights to said photo. 
     

Legal News

  • Obnoxious Instagram “personality” Jay Mazini is going to prison for running a Ponzi scheme.  

    “This multi-million dollar case is a reminder for anyone thinking of investing: Be skeptical of any investments with larger than life promises, because if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” IRS-CI Special Agent-in-Charge Fattorusso said in a statement.
     
  • Twitter won yet another account termination case, for the same reasons as usual (i.e., Section 230 and Twitter’s TOS).
     
  • Speaking of Twitter, their recent high-level departures have caught the FTC’s attention
     
  • And speaking of the FTC, they will meet next week to vote on whether to initiate rulemaking that would expand the Business Opportunity Rule to cover “business and e-commerce coaching and work-from-home offers.”

Off topic:

Here’s my favorite quote shouted in a moment of victory that I can think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKQOXYB2cd8.  Both an inquisitive and exclamatory statement at once, it defies categorization. 

Thanks for making it this far.  Have a great weekend!

-Rob