This file photo from Monday Oct. 17, 2016, shows shoppers and pedestrians in a crosswalk near a giant billboard next to Macy's flagship department store in Herald Square in New York. Macy's has filed a lawsuit against the company that owns the billboard, fighting to prevent Amazon from taking over the advertising space that carried Macy's name for almost 60 years. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
Macy's has filed a lawsuit against the company that owns the giant billboard next to its flagship Manhattan store, fighting to prevent Amazon from taking over the advertising space that carried Macy's name for almost 60 years.
In the lawsuit, filed last week in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, the department store retailer said there has been a restrictive covenant in place since 1963 barring the billboard space from being used by any Macy's competitor.
But Macy's said that when it tried to negotiate a lease renewal this year, the billboard's owners, the Kaufman Organization, told them they were in discussions with a “prominent online retailer," and there was “little doubt" that meant Amazon, according to the lawsuit.
Messages were left with the Kaufman Organization seeking comment. Amazon had no comment.
In the lawsuit, Macy's asked the judge for an injunction that would keep Kaufman from leasing the space to Amazon or any other competitor.
“The damages to Macy’s customer goodwill, image, reputation and brand, should a ‘prominent online retailer’ (especially, Amazon) advertise on the billboard are impossible to calculate," the company said in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit pointed out that the billboard is highly visible in its annual Thanksgiving Day parade, which is nationally televised.
The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was tricked into an extended phone call in January with Russian pranksters posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Powell appeared to discuss the economic impact of interest rate hikes.
Amazon on Thursday reported stronger-than-expected revenue and profits for the first quarter, sending its stocks higher in after-hours trading. But its prices took a dip in the evening amid concerns about a continued slowdown in the company's profitable cloud computing unit AWS.
A key index of underlying inflation that is closely followed by the Federal Reserve remained elevated last month, keeping the Fed on track to raise interest rates next week for the 10th time since March of last year.
