Commercial General Liability: Coverage B - Personal and Advertising Injury
Coverage B covers sums the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of personal and advertising injury caused by an offense arising out of the insured's business, but only offenses committed in the coverage territory during the policy period. Personal and advertising injury is defined by enumerated offenses: false arrest, detention, or imprisonment; malicious prosecution; wrongful eviction or entry; libel, slander, or disparagement; invasion of privacy; use of another's advertising idea in the insured's advertisement; and infringement of copyright, trade dress, or slogan in the insured's advertisement.
Candidates must notice what is not there. Patent infringement, trademark infringement, and trade secret misappropriation are typically excluded or not enumerated. The offense must arise in an advertisement, which means publication to the public. Knowing violation of another's rights is excluded, as is breach of contract. Coverage B also excludes offenses committed by an insured whose business is advertising, broadcasting, publishing, or telecasting.
Traps: confusing Coverage A's accident requirement with Coverage B's offense requirement; assuming Coverage B covers all intellectual property claims; missing that the offense must occur during the policy period; and overlooking that oral or written publication is required for many offenses.
Rule of thumb: match the claim to a listed offense, confirm it arose in an advertisement or business context, then check the knowledge and IP exclusions. Worked example: a retailer runs a newspaper ad using a competitor's copyrighted jingle. The competitor sues for copyright infringement in an advertisement. That is a listed offense, so Coverage B may respond. If the same competitor sued for patent infringement of the jingle's recording technology, Coverage B would not apply because patent infringement is not an enumerated offense.