After spending the last week or so taking pot shots at each other, AT&T and Verizon met in court yesterday to do legal battle over Verizon's latest wireless ads, which criticize AT&T's 3G network coverage and performance. AT&T had complained to the courts that the 3G coverage maps (clearly labeled as such) in the ads could confuse customers into thinking customers didn't get voice and EDGE coverage in non-3G markets. The Judge overseeing the case has not surprisingly denied AT&T's request to have the ads pulled, but has set a December 16 date to hear further arguments in the case.

Of course by the time this is settled, the "damage" to AT&T will already have been done -- made worse in this case by all the extra attention AT&T's suit brought to Verizon's ads, and in turn AT&T's network coverage. To try and make up some ground, AT&T has launched a new series of ads featuring Luke Wilson, proclaiming rather vaguely that AT&T offers "the best 3G experience." Surely there's some AT&T customers who'd like to take AT&T to task on that claim after the last year's worth of iPhone connectivity issues, belated MMS functionality and other problems?

At this point, AT&T's probably better off just giving those advertising and legal fees to their network engineers, who are in the field busily trying to upgrade the network and migrating markets to 850MHz.