What does Verizon have in common with Snickers, Nike, and Heinz? It came up with an ad that it thought was super clever, but actually rankled more than a few consumers and activist organizations and, rather than defend its ad spot, pulled it altogether.

While Snickers, Nike, and Heinz fell victim to gay rights groups slapping their ads on the wrong side of homophobic, Verizon caught the wrath of PETA for this spot, which shows pit bulls chained up guarding a car lot where a young gentleman managed to lose his phone. After PETA got on the case, some 7,000 people emailed Verizon with complaints. So what got everyone so upset?

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It was like the time Viacom thought it could bilk Google out of $1 billion for copyright infringement, knowing full well its lawsuit was all but a negotiating tactic — mega corporation v. mega corporation lawsuits are filled with legalese, and little substance. But in the battle for television subscribers, Verizon doesn't look to be playing games. Its FiOS service, which delivers cable TV to the home over fiber optic wires, is a direct competitor of behemoth Time Warner's proper cable TV service. And in the battle for subscribers, Verizon alleges in a new lawsuit that Time Warner is unfairly describing its competitor in advertisements: "The lawsuit [...] alleged that the latest version of a long-running Time Warner Cable ad mocking a Verizon door-to-door salesman falsely compared Verizon's FiOS service with its own cable offering. Verizon says that Time Warner Cable's ad implies FiOS requires a satellite dish for TV service and that it isn't able to bundle together high-speed Internet, video and phone calls. The lawsuit also says the ad claims FiOS TV isn't available in New York and that Time Warner Cable's use of fiber optics predates Verizon's."

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday. How nice of YouTube's "VZBlogger," whose four YouTube videos include three Verizon ads, to have posted the Time Warner ad to YouTube just twenty hours ago so you could see how mean the bully is being!

And meanwhile, TV service isn't the only place Time Warner is unleashing the hounds against Verizon.

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