uTwo Vehicles Crash Into N.J. Wendy’s In Second Car Accident At Restaurant In 3 Monthsr

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  (CBS New York)

  They say lightning never strikes twice, but no one ever said cars can’t come crashing through the window of a single Wendy’s more than once. To wit: two vehicles collided with each other in Paramus, N.J. yesterday, sending them both into a Wendy’s that was hit by a car in June.

  Four customers inside the restaurant were taken to the hospital for treatment, though no serious injuries were reported, according to CBS New York. A car and a minivan were headed in the same direction on a road near the Wendy’s yesterday about five p.m., when the driver of the car apparently cut off the van while trying to get into the restaurant’s parking lot.

  The vehicles crashed into each other, jumped the curb and then went careening into the Wendy’s, where the minivan ended up inside.

  “One of the drivers was in shock, crying — her and her I guess I assume it was boyfriend — and then the other driver, she had a child with her,” said the tow truck driver who arrived on the scene minutes after the crash, adding, “Thank God the child was all right.”

  He added that he was relieved to get the cars out of the building without it falling down, which is definitely a concern when there’s that kind of structural damage. Workers had installed a support beam by late Thursday night to hold up the restaurant temporarily.

  In June, a customer was hospitalized after an SUV crashed into the same restaurant. But is it bad luck or a bad design? The two incidents have prompted questions about the location of the restaurant’s entrance, which some say is too close to the exit for another major road.

  “Honestly I think it’s an engineering flaw, and something needs to be done,” the two truck driver said.

  The driver of the car was ticketed for careless driving.

  2 Vehicles Sent Crashing Into Paramus Wendy’s After Collision [CBS New York]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uDisney, Lucasfilm, Sanrio Form Legal Alliance To Take Down Makers Of Counterfeit Marvel, Star Wars, Hello Kitty Cake Frostingr

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  This is one of the allegedly infringing cake frosting sheets the defendants are selling on eBay.

  We’ve all seen local bakeries and supermarkets selling cakes decorated with the images of trademarked cartoon/movie/comic characters and not many people seem to care that the decorator may not have permission to use these images. But there’s also a difference between someone’s hand-iced Captain America cake and a company that uses movie stills and promotional art to make pre-fab cake frosting sheets. Thus, Disney, Lucasfilm and Sanrio — tired of seeing cakes featuring the unauthorized faces of Yoda, Iron Man, and Hello Kitty — have teamed up to sue two Michigan men for trademark and copyright infringement.

  In the complaint [PDF], filed earlier this week in a federal court in California, lawyers representing Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Sanrio allege that the two men (and other unnamed defendants) used an eBay storefront to sell “counterfeit edible cake frosting sheets and related items, which incorporate unauthorized likenesses of animated or live action characters or other logos owned by” the plaintiffs.

  The lists of supposedly violated trademarks take up around 15 pages of the complaint. They range from classic Disney characters — Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Bambi, Frozen, Toy Story, Cinderella… even images from that horrendous mauling of The Black Cauldron — to dozens of Hello Kitty trademarks, to Marvel icons like Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, to the Star Wars universe, including a copyright described as “Darth Vader and Son,” which makes us which Luke and his pop had just patched things up and opened a hardware store together.

  The plaintiffs say they served — and the defendants received — cease and desist demands, but that the allegedly fraudulent frosters continued on with their business.

  “By engaging in this conduct, Defendants have acted in willful disregard of laws protecting Plaintiffs’ goodwill and related proprietary rights and have confused and deceived, or threaten to confuse and deceive, the consuming public concerning the source and sponsorship of the products,” reads the complaint.

  In addition to seeking damages and to stop the defendants from selling anymore infringing cake decorations, the plaintiffs are calling for the seizure of “any molds, screens, patterns, plates, negatives, machinery or equipment used for making or manufacturing” the offending products.

  While we couldn’t find the defendants’ store on the U.S. eBay platform, the folks at ComicBookResources.com found what appears to be the defendants’ items for sale on eBay Australia. Aside from the Yoda birthday cake decoration at the top of this story, this store sells frosting screens for video game titles (Assassin’s Creed, Halo), TV shows (Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead), non-Disney animation (Minions, Curious George)… and random pieces of female apparel.

  The Hollywood Reporter’s Eriq Gardner notes that the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in this case appears to have carved out a nice niche in going after the kitschier end of trademark infringement complaints. This attorney recently settled a lawsuit with the makers of Darth Vader cufflinks and is currently litigating a case involving the legality of Batmobile replicas.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uLongtime L.L. Bean President And Founder’s Grandson Dies At Age 80r

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• The flagship L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine doesn’t close. It literally does not have locks on its doors. Yet it’s going to close next weekend during the funeral of the company’s former longtime president and the grandson of founder L.L. Bean himself, Leon Gorman, who died yesterday at age 80.

  When Gorman took over as company president in 1967, the company wasn’t the retail giant that we know today. During his time with the company, it grew 20% per year, and went from having about 100 employees to more than 5,000, mostly in Maine since Gorman resisted the trend of outsourcing customer service.

  Some employees were nervous when the founder died and Gorman took over in 1967, but it turned out that his grandfather and uncle weren’t running things very effectively. “L.L. and his son, Carl, held onto all the authority, yet weren’t doing anything. The product line and catalog merchandising and operations were all going downhill,” Gorman told the Portland Press-Herald in an interview about company history a few years ago.

  L.L. Bean was also an early e-commerce adopter, even though Gorman himself didn’t know how to use a computer. They began accepting orders online in 1995, yet still mail millions of paper catalogs every year, perhaps always understanding the public’s love of glossy catalogs even if they would ultimately place orders online.

  The company remains family-owned, and the current chairman is one of Gorman’s nephews, but the current president and CEO isn’t a family member.

  Leon Gorman, visionary who led L.L. Bean’s growth into a global giant, dies at 80 [Portland Press-Herald]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uU.S. Chamber Of Commerce Sues FCC To Stop Efforts To Block Obnoxious Robocallsr

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  (Jenn and Tony Bot)

  
  Consumers hate getting endless robocalls on their landlines and cell phones, and with good reason: they’re incredibly annoying. But they exist for a reason, too: legitimate businesses and scammers alike both find that, to some degree, they work. So when the FCC proposes a rule to let consumers cut back on the annoyance in their lives, businesses are not necessarily thrilled.

  That’s why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing the FCC to block that new rule, the Hill reports.

  The FCC voted 3-2 to adopt the changes back in June. As part of that proceeding, the commission delved heavily into the legal technicalities surrounding the definitions of autodialers and what, exactly, is covered under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

  As technology has advanced, so too has autodialer tech. Where once upon a time robocalling hundreds, thousands, or millions of people used to take an actual machine hooked up to an actual phone, that time has gone. Now, it’s all VoIP software that can run on basically computer — including, yes, the phone-sized ones we all keep in our pockets and purses.

  That’s one of the aspects that the Chamber of Commerce most objects to, The Hill explains. In their filing (PDF), claims, “The Declaratory Ruling and Order’s new, overbroad, and atextual interpretations of the TCPA will expose legitimate businesses across the country — of all sizes and types — to liability for simply attempting in good faith to communicate with customers who previously provided valid consent to be contacted.”

  “Furthermore,” it continues, the ruling, “could turn even a mass-market smartphone into a covered ‘autodialer,’ and threatens to create an utterly unworkable regime for the logistics of receiving and processing consent revocation.”

  Therefore, the petition concludes, the new rule is “arbitrary and capricious” and “an abuse of discretion in excess of the Commission’s statutory authority.”

  The effort to stop the new rule is not unexpected. As part of his dissenting vote back in June, FCC commissioner Ajit Pai even dropped a self-fulfilling prophecy that “The primary beneficiaries [of the rule] will be trial lawyers, not American consumers.”

  The Chamber of Commerce, of course, exists to represent business interests — even when those interests are not necessarily good for consumers.

  Chamber of Commerce challenges FCC’s robocall ruling [The Hill]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uPilot Flying As An American Airlines Passenger Caught On Video Texting During Takeoffr

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  (via Charlotte Observer)

  Where there are rules, there will inevitably be people who break them. But it’s still surprising when someone who’s tasked with enforcing those rules is instead doing exactly what they usually tell others not to do. That was the case for a man flying on American Airlines recently, who filmed an airline pilot traveling as a passenger on a flight from Charlotte to Tampa texting on his cellphone during takeoff.

  The Federal Aviation Administration has eased up on the use of electronic devices while planes are in flight, but travelers are required to put their phones in airplane mode if their gadgets are turned on.

  The man who shot footage on the Aug. 14 flight had his own phone in airplane mode while shooting the video, reports the Charlotte Observer, and says he was at first annoyed, and then disturbed to see a pilot flouting federal regulations.

  After landing in Florida, the passenger wrote a letter to American Airlines CEO Doug Parker to express his concern.

  “I am sure he is a good pilot, but even a small lapse in judgment in his profession can get people killed, and it bothers me that he can so casually disregard FAA regulations in the public view,” he wrote. “I fear what he may be doing in the cockpit that could jeopardize passenger safety.”

  American Airlines said the pilot works for another airline, but didn’t say which one.

  “I do know the other airline addressed the issue with the pilot,” an American Airlines spokeswoman told the Observer. “If someone is concerned about what another passenger is doing, notify the flight attendant so they can address it when it happens,” she added.

  Again, if this was a video of some guy who doesn’t fly planes for a living texting away, it likely wouldn’t be in the news. But the man who filmed the video says it got his goat especially as he’s been told in the past to turn his phone off entirely during takeoff.

  “I started thinking, ‘They’ve got these rules in place for a reason,’” he said. “… The pilots, more than anyone, should know those rules and obey them.”

  Pilot caught texting during takeoff from Charlotte [Charlotte Observer]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uE-Book Prices Increase, Sales Slump After Amazon & Publishers Finalize Contractsr

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  (Micah Baldwin)

  Just three months after Amazon tied up its bevy of contracts with top publishing houses, it looks like those deals might not be working out well for several companies, as they’ve reported declining e-book revenues in recent months.

  The Wall Street Journal reports that Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have all reported declining online book sales after inking deals with Amazon that gave the publishers more say in the prices for their titles.

  A look at the Kindle store found that each of the five big publishers – which also includes Penguin Random House and Macmillian – have an average cost of $10.81 per e-book, while online books from others had an average price of $4.95, research group Codex Group LLC found.

  “Since book buyers expect the price of a Kindle e-book to be well under $9, once you get to over $10 consumers start to say, ‘Let me think about that,’” Codex CEO Peter Hildick-Smith tells the WSJ.

  The group found that in some cases the cost of an e-book was actually on par with the cost of a new hardcover version. For example, a new novel — published by Macmillian — by Jonathan Franzen costs $15.10 for hardcover, just $0.11 more than the e-book price.

  In another case, this time for Hachette, the company priced an e-book new release from James Patterson at $9.99 last year, his latest book, though, is listed at $14.99.

  The company reported a 24% decline in e-book sales in the first half of 2015, the WSJ reports.

  Hachette says the decline in e-book sales is a result of fewer hot titles and the implementation of its Amazon deal.

  According to the Association of American Publishers, the first five months of 2015, publisher e-book revenue for adult, children’s and young adult titles fell 10.4% to $583 million compared with the same time in 2014.

  “The new business model for e-books is having a significant impact on what [the big] publishers report,” one publishing executive tells the WSJ. “There’s no question that publishers’ net receipts have gone down.”

  Still, other publishers tell the WSJ that e-book sales aren’t a result of the Amazon deals.

  In fact, he says the industry is a “title driven business. If you have a good book, price isn’t an issue.”

  E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts [The Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uThe Backyard Barbecue Isn’t As Popular As It Used To Ber

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  (jpmarth)

  Though visions of hamburgers and hotdogs may be dancing through your head as we approach the Labor Day holiday weekend, the heyday of the backyard barbecue has come and gone, some say, partly because of the high price of beef.

  Before you start clanging your cooking tongs in disbelief, it’s not that grilling outside is going away or no one’s doing it, it’s just that not as many people are cooking in the open air as before: after two decades of increasing popularity, the percentage of U.S. homes using their barbecue grill for a main meal in a typical two-week period dropped to 35% last year from 40% in 2009, Bloomberg reports, citing data from market researcher NPD group.

  One factor? Beef prices have been going up, with the price of a boneless steak sirloin reaching a record $8.84 per pound. Steak makes up 21% of dinners on the grill at home, in comparison to 32% in 1985. Burgers also aren’t as popular, NPD says.

  (If you do make burgers at home, here are four ways you can cook up some juicy ones safely)

  There’s also factors like the Polar Vortex pushing people indoors to cook, and more Hispanic and Asian consumers and the younger generation going for different, international flavors.

  People aren’t buying grills and smokers as much as before either, with shipments for both hitting their peak in North America in 2007, sliding three years straight through 2013.

  “Barbecuing is not going away,” Darren Seifer, a New York-based food and beverage analyst at NPD told Bloomberg. “It’s just that it’s peaked.”

  The good news for the roughly two-thirds of households who will be heading out to the yard and firing up the grill this weekend: wholesale pork prices are down, and supermarkets are likely to respond by offering good deals on the other white meat.

  If you do choose to barbecue or smoke food outdoors this weekend, remember to keep your grill a safe distance from any structures. Any way you cook it, happy eating and have a safe and delightful Labor Day weekend.

  We’ve Hit Peak Barbecue, and Steak Prices Are Partly to Blame [Bloomberg]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist