Litigation

A fork, a key and a watch are placed on a metal table by a white-smocked scientist. A sepulchral figure grimaces with concentration as, by the power of mind alone, he bends into mangled lumps of metal the fork and the key, then the legs of the table and finally even the chair he is sitting on. Yet the watch barely shudders. "Timex," intones an announcer. "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking." At last, television viewers understand that they have been watching a sly parody of both the famous Timex slogan and the sort of magic act often performed by such self-professed psychics as Uri Geller.

Among the unamused: Geller himself. After the ads aired in 1989, he sued Timex and the advertising firm Fallon McElligott, which created the spot, for a very down-to-earth $8 million. Geller asserted that Timex used the fame of his "psychic abilities" to sell their watches. But last month a New York district court judge threw out four of Geller's five claims, such as the assertion that the ad violated his right to control his own image and publicity. The case will now proceed on the sole claim that Tim Dry, the actor featured in the commercials, "was sufficiently similar to the plaintiff to create the likelihood of confusion among the public," an allegation that the watchmaker firmly rejects. You be the judge.