Large pharmaceutical companies are taking their fight against inexpensive generic drugs to the states, promoting proposals that would mean pharmacists could no longer automatically replace certain brand-name drugs with no-name counterparts. Measures have been considered by 27 states and approved by two -- Utah and Tennessee -- over the past year, according to the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, which opposes the changes. The Food and Drug Administration has said repeatedly that generic drugs are safe and effective, and that brand-name drugs and their generic substitutes are equivalent and have the same effect on patients. But big drug companies …

The top 300 executives at Chrysler are expected to turn off their BlackBerrys today and begin three days of in-house management seminars aimed at putting customers first in all of Chrysler's operations. CEO Robert Nardelli himself is scheduled to lead a session on the corporate culture of a customer-driven company. The event is the centerpiece of a broader, yearlong effort by Nardelli to overhaul attitudes at Chrysler. "The traditional way of running the company got us where we are now," he says. "So we're trying to break some of the old paradigms." The Chrysler CEO is also scheduling …

More than 10,000 dealerships, nearly all of which sold American brands, have closed since 1970, according to the National Automotive Dealers Association. Last year, 430 called it quits, and the organization expects at least that many -- but probably far more -- to close in 2008, leaving about 20,000 of them nationwide. Decades of declining market share have left the Detroit companies with too many stores and too few customers. In the last 40 years, GM alone has gone from building almost three out of every five vehicles sold in the U.S. to about one out of five. Last …

A bitter copyright infringement trial in U.S. District Court in Riverside, Calif., pits Mattel against MGA Entertainment of Van Nuys, a formerly small player that launched Bratz in 2001. Mattel says that the saucy Bratz -- known for hip-hugging outfits and bare midriffs -- was created secretly by one of its own designers who at the time was working on its signature Barbie line. Carter Bryant got a job designing fashions, hair and makeup on the Barbie line at Mattel in 1995 and stayed until April 1998, when he left to live with his parents. Bryant and MGA contend …

Procter & Gamble, which spends nearly $5 billion a year on advertising, devoted less than 2% of its measured ad spending online, according to figures from Advertising Age. The University of Phoenix and its parent company, Apollo Group, by contrast, spent $278 million on ads last year. Most of it was on the Web, where it ranks as the No. 1 spender. The dichotomy highlights what for many online media businesses is a grim economic reality: The biggest U.S. advertisers have not fully embraced the Web. In part, many observers say, the advertising industry and its workforce are more …