Oprah, Dr. Oz and the state of Illinois are fighting back against the rash of online advertising hijacking their names, and it could send ripples through the affiliate marketing industry.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against three suppliers and an Illinois-based affiliate marketer on grounds that their promises led them into a shady rebilling scheme without explaining the terms of their “free trial.” For anyone who doesn’t know, these rebilling schemes lure customers with a trial offer, asking them only to pay shipping, then billing them early or making it nearly impossible to cancel after their trial ended.

Madigan said the tactics took advantage of online shoppers.

“For thousands of dieters, the quest for a miracle product has become a nightmare,” said Attorney General Madigan. “Far too often, consumers end up losing their money — not weight — in these deals.”
Harpo, Inc., producers of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “The Dr. Oz Show,” along with Dr. Mehmet Oz, also filed a massive trademark infringement complaint against 40 Internet marketers of dietary supplements, including acai berry products among others.

The lawsuits come after an investigation into consumer complaints that revealed the deceptive practices of these companies.

“The acai berry supplement sales programs are among the most aggressive that we have seen using misleading sales tactics to scam consumers,” said Madigan. “Consumers should always be skeptical and educate themselves instead of blindly believing any endorsement claims. Also, consumers need to be very wary of weight loss and health claims that sound too good to be true.”

Neither Oprah Winfrey nor Dr. Oz has ever sponsored or endorsed any acai berry or dietary supplement product. Oprah also put a warning on her site saying as much.

Consumers should be aware that neither Oprah Winfrey nor Dr. Oz are associated with nor do they endorse any açaí berry product, company or online solicitation of such products, including MonaVie juice products. Attorneys for Harpo are pursuing companies that claim such an affiliation.

She also mentioned that neither she nor Dr. Oz endorsed resveratrol, another popular weight-loss/superfood supplement.

There is a lot of skepticism about how much these lawsuits will really be able to do to punish affiliate marketers who spouted the false or confusing claims, but it could still mean some big changes in the world of internet marketing.

There are a lot of internet marketers that say this is just what the industry needs, a sort of culling blaze to clean up all the debris littering the industry. But whether or not these lawsuits have any effect in the long term is purely speculation.

Professional advertisers hope it will put an end to shady rebilling offers and bring legitimacy to the remaining marketers, but in reality, these types of schemes have been around for decades. There will always be an advertising network with a few of these type of offers because no matter how unpopular and unscrupulous, they make money.

The lawsuits should have marketers thinking about how to find more sustainable methods of making money. Instead of jumping on the latest diet pill fad, perhaps this will have good marketers who once pushed bad offers thinking about making legitimate profits.

For the rest, these lawsuits won’t likely change much of anything. Marketers will take Oprah’s name off their acai berry sites and ads and wait for the next fad.