The scoop :Quote: Emerson Drops Product Placement Case Against NBC
by David Goetzl, Friday, Feb 23, 2007 8:33 AM ET

A LAWSUIT ALLEGING THAT NBC engaged in unauthorized and unflattering product placement in the hit show " HEROES " has been settled out-of-court. NBC Universal reached an agreement in which the Emerson Electric Co. would drop the case charging the network with "causing irreparable injury" to its InSinkErator waste-disposal brand.

Terms of the deal were not available, although Emerson last week dropped the charges in a filing with a Missouri court.

In the suit filed in October, Emerson said NBC did not have its permission to use the clearly visible InSinkErator brand in the show, and sought compensation for a slew of resulting damages.

Emerson declined comment. NBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but last fall reportedly said it did not feel it was liable. Attorneys that represented both sides also declined comment.

Back in October, Emerson was so enraged--or perhaps interested in seeking a favorable settlement--that it even declined to drop the charges after NBC reportedly agreed to edit the scene in the "HEROES" episode, in which a character sticks her hand in a kitchen-sink InSinkErator and pulls it out mangled and bloodied.

Among Emerson's charges about the Sept. 25 series premiere were trademark infringement and dilution, and unfair competition for misrepresenting and sullying the InSinkErator brand.

Had it gone to trial and Emerson won, the case could have set a precedent regarding a network's rights in how it depicts branded products in its creative work.

However, Mark McKenna, a trademark law expert at St. Louis University School of Law, last fall wrote in an email: "The case is very unlikely to succeed against NBC."

"There is precedent for the notion that certain uses of another party's trademark in an unflattering light can be deemed tarnishment or disparagement," he wrote. "I am not aware, however, of any case finding a use of a branded product in a creative work to violate trademark rights.".