Issue No. 061 · Story 02 · October 2, 2026

Quince Wins Dismissal of Williams-Sonoma Advertising Claims

A California federal judge dismissed Williams-Sonoma's false advertising and related claims against Quince without prejudice. The September 30 order found that the retailer had not plausibly alleged actionable false or misleading comparisons. Williams-Sonoma may file an amended complaint by October 21.

§The court rejected the theory that Quince's Beyond Compare charts necessarily represent the competing products as identical.
§The order distinguished statements that products are similar from claims of literal identity and found gaps in the allegations about quality, pricing, consumer deception, and injury.
§The ruling addresses the sufficiency of this complaint. It does not end the case with prejudice or resolve every possible challenge to comparative advertising.

THE TAKEAWAY

The dispute concerns how a retailer uses established home-goods brands in comparison marketing. The court required factual support for the challenged representations rather than treating references to competing brands as sufficient by themselves.

Source: The Fashion Law

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Third Circuit Rejects ROSS Copyright Fair Use Defense

The Third Circuit affirmed partial summary judgment for Thomson Reuters in its copyright case against ROSS Intelligence. The court held that 2,243 Westlaw headnotes were sufficiently original for protection and that ROSS's use of them to train a competing legal search system was not fair use.