Profili critici del mobile advertising (paragrafi 1,2,3)

The issue of mobile phone advertising (m-advertising) is hotly topical on both economic and social grounds. This article introduces some legal aspects of m-advertising, with particular reference to US and Italian experiences. The leading idea of m-advertising is to join toghether a lot of services and technologies giving rise to an original product, different from commercial advertising as a whole and from Internet advertising too. This charateristic does not amount only to the fact that communication takes new forms, but rather it depends on the peculiarities of mobile media. For example, the latter works on more specific target due to realtime location data. To provide a first legal framework for m-ad, the following points are here assessed: the legal environment of a mobile market for apps; consumer protection and contractual information; privacy and personal data protection; impacts of a revenues sharing’s model on patent litigation and violation of competition law. It is concluded that m-advertising needs a more tailored regulation in order to prevent market distortions and to improve consumer’s informed choice.