Tom O’Keefe suing American Express, Ogilvy and Mather, and Digitas- update
I just realized I hadn’t seen any mention of this out there on the Internet, so I figured I might as well play town crier for updates to this story.
As I’ve mentioned (briefly) before (and as has been mentioned in several other places) , in September, 2006 Thomas O’Keefe filed a lawsuit against American Express, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, and Digitas, Inc. claiming, among other things, copyright and trademark infringement.
Here’s an illustration getting to the heart of the matter:
The update is this- the Defendants (aka Goliath x 3) moved to dismiss the claims and the Judge denied their motion. Which means the suit continues on to the discovery phase. Which is, I’m lead to believe, a good thing (if you’re Tom- it’s not so good if you’re the other guys.)
Someone whose legal expertise goes beyond Law and Order reruns might be able to shed some light on how significant that next step really is…
Another interesting note is that right around the same time the judge denied their motion, American Express announced they were phasing out “My Life, My Card” and were replacing it with “Are You a Cardmember?” Which is news, even if it has nothing at all to do with the lawsuit, because they basically had three campaigns (”Do you know me?”,”Membership has its privileges”, “Do more”) over thirty years and have now switched this one up after only three.
On a related note… Tom is now blogging pretty regularly.