AT&T loses court battle with Verizon, fires back with new ad

Pop quiz: What's the best way to deal with a schoolyard bully who's pushing you around? Do you a) run to teacher or b) punch back?

Well, it looks like AT&T finally got wise and decided to hit back against Verizon's fiendishly clever "There's a map for that" ads with a punchy commercial of its own—a necessary strategy, given that an Atlanta judge has curtly denied AT&T's request to yank Verizon's ad campaign off the air.

The spot features actor Luke Wilson in front of a bright orange chart, complete with a list of five items and ten checkboxes—five for AT&T, five for Verizon Wireless.

Wilson starts ticking off each item ("Who offers the best 3G experience? Let's compare") and sticks big foam "X"'s next to the winner—which, of course, happens to be AT&T for the first four categories, including "fastest 3G network" (AT&T's slogan, after all), "talk and surf at the same time," (possible on AT&T's HSDPA network, impossible via Verizon's EV-DO network), "most popular smartphones" (meaning the iPhone, no doubt), and "access to over 100,000 apps" (the Apple App Store).

Check, check, check, all AT&T. Finally, Wilson gets to the last item: "Name that starts with the letter 'V'? Hey, they got one."

Is the new commercial as effective as Verizon's "There's a map for that" ads, which show frustrated chatters with patchy, clearly marked AT&T 3G coverage maps floating over their heads? That's for you to decide, of course, but at least AT&T finally did what it should have done in the first place: fighting back with an ad of its own.

It's clearly a better idea than going to court, which AT&T's legal team found out Wednesday after an Atlanta judge denied AT&T's request for a temporary injunction against Verizon's "misleading" ad campaign.

AT&T argued that the Verizon commercials are deceptive because viewers might think all the white space on AT&T's 3G coverage map denotes areas where AT&T has no coverage at all, when in fact AT&T's (much slower) EDGE network covers a large swath of the nation.

But U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten didn't agree, according to Bloomberg. "The fact that people misunderstand the ads does not always mean the ads are misleading," Batten said during yesterday's heading (as reported by Bloomberg).

AT&T vows to fight on, but the judge wasn't too encouraging, adding that "AT&T has failed to show a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits of any of its claims."

So it looks like running to teacher—or the judge, in this case—isn't going to help AT&T in its spat with Verizon. Instead, it'll have to be settled on the schoolyard, albeit with commercials rather than little fists. And in the end, consumers, rather than a judge, will decide who wins.

Related:
AT&T Loses Bid to Stop Verizon Ads, May Lose Case [Bloomberg]