I promised myself I wouldn’t do any work today but I just couldn’t let this one slide… According to Wired.com, the teeth whitening company is suing the following:

1. Google

2. Yahoo

3. Microsoft

and last but not least… AzoogleAds/Epic Advertising! (There are more parties being sued, check .PDF below)

They are suing the first three because the search engine giants let people run similar ad “ripoffs” that use their name on their advertising platforms. Apparently, the real Dazzle offer was taken down roughly a couple weeks back but was revived by the owner of a corporation that owns Just Think Media, Jesse Willms, who created the Dazzle Smile Pro and Dazzle Smile Pure products. The whole thing is a big confusing mess with all these other company names mixed into the scheme, all with similar “Dazzle Smile” phrases as their company name. So let’s break that down… the owner of a corporation that owns Just Think Media recreates a similar product using the trademarks of the original DazzleSmile, LLC product and funds it himself. (I always thought it was all the same people running Dazzle under different names to avoid legal fire but I guess not? If someone has insight on this feel free to comment!)

It’s hard to tell who is who but basically the original DazzleSmile is really pissed off for supposedly getting all the blame that other DazzleSmile ripoffs deserve. All the similar teeth whitening Dazzle companies are trying to use their trademark for their own personal gain and using deceptive methods in the process, so there are a lot of trademark infringement accusations.

The CEO of Dazzlesmile blamed Epic Ads for being behind all the questionable activity that the media has been accusing his company of doing by stating the following in an interview with Wired.com in early October:

“…his company was duped by its outside marketing agency, New York-based Epic Advertising, which he claims engineered the deceptive language used in its offers without his knowledge.”

This really is a cluster fuck of names and lawsuits but I have a feeling with the combination of FTC guidelines going active December 1 and further investigations by them against a lot of these teeth whitening companies, there are going to be a lot of changes in the teeth whitening niche and maybe rebills in general.

Here are all the articles I’ve found on the topic:

Main Article on Wired.com from November 24, 2009 talking about lawsuits specifically

Second Article interviewing DazzleSmile, LLC CEO from October 20, 2009

.PDF with all the legal jargon and full list of the parties under fire by DazzleSmile, LLC