Clint Eastwood Wins Second CBD Trademark Infringement Suit
- 2 years ago
Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood still has plenty of fight left at age 92, winning a second payday against marketers who used his likeness without his permission. The ticked-off actor, producer and multiple Academy Award winner, along with the agency that owns the rights to his name and image outside of movies, was left with a big fistful of dollars after being handed $2.6 million in damages in June.
According to Vanity Fair, California-based marketing company, Norok Innovation, was ordered to ante up the hefty haul of cash for Eastwood and Garrapata. The suit alleged that Norok leveraged the actor’s “celebrity status to drive online traffic — via a hidden metatag game — to a website selling CBD products.” The Hollywood Reporter notes this is the second time CBD manufacturers and marketers that fabricated news articles and manipulated search results decided to take on the star. In the fall of 2021, Lithuanian company Mediatonas UAB was ordered to pay $7.7 million in damages after allegedly posting manufactured endorsements from Eastwood.
In one of two lawsuits, it was argued CBD makers and marketers whose products were included in an online article included a fake interview with the star and used unrelated television footage to support the claims, per the New York Times. In the most recent win, The Hollywood Reporter cites a June 24 order. “US$2 million is a reasonable representation of the fair market value of Mr. Eastwood’s services in lending his influential and known name to a hidden metatag campaign for products he likely would have been unwilling to endorse in the first place.”
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney noted that the only endorsement deal Eastwood has taken part in over his decades of celebrity related to a Super Bowl television commercial in 2012.
According to Vanity Fair, California-based marketing company, Norok Innovation, was ordered to ante up the hefty haul of cash for Eastwood and Garrapata. The suit alleged that Norok leveraged the actor’s “celebrity status to drive online traffic — via a hidden metatag game — to a website selling CBD products.” The Hollywood Reporter notes this is the second time CBD manufacturers and marketers that fabricated news articles and manipulated search results decided to take on the star. In the fall of 2021, Lithuanian company Mediatonas UAB was ordered to pay $7.7 million in damages after allegedly posting manufactured endorsements from Eastwood.
In one of two lawsuits, it was argued CBD makers and marketers whose products were included in an online article included a fake interview with the star and used unrelated television footage to support the claims, per the New York Times. In the most recent win, The Hollywood Reporter cites a June 24 order. “US$2 million is a reasonable representation of the fair market value of Mr. Eastwood’s services in lending his influential and known name to a hidden metatag campaign for products he likely would have been unwilling to endorse in the first place.”
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney noted that the only endorsement deal Eastwood has taken part in over his decades of celebrity related to a Super Bowl television commercial in 2012.