Clint Eastwood has reportedly succeeded in receiving a default judgment against a CBD retailer for using his name and likeness to promote its products.
In the suit, the Hollywood star claimed that Norok Innovation created fake news articles that mentioned Mr. Eastwood both in the content of the article and within the articles' metadata. This allowed Norok to take advantage of search engine algorithms to guide customers to the CBD retailers when those customers searched for Mr. Eastwood’s name, a tactic with which Mr. Eastwood took issue .
As Norok did not defend, Mr. Eastwood successfully moved for default judgment.
While Mr. Eastwood sought US$3 million in damages, he was only awarded US$2.6 million. Mr. Eastwood had only agreed to one endorsement deal prior to this for a Super Bowl commercial in 2012, and so the judge was not able to find that Mr. Eastwood’s market value for an endorsement was at the amount Mr. Eastwood claimed.
Authors: Mark Leonard and Divyajyot (DJ) Verma, 2022/2023 Articling Student-at-law
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