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In the popular video game Shadow of Mordor, players don’t just randomly slash, hack, and pillage. They battle specific opponents through a feature known as the Nemesis System. In the FTC’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, truth in advertising had a nemesis: paid pitches for Shadow of Mordor that Warner Bros. deceptively claimed were independent reviews. And read on for a startlingly candid statement by one of those influencers. To...

Recently, the FTC sent hundreds of thousands of refund checks to people who bought the book The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About by pitchman Kevin Trudeau. Court decisions have established there wasn’t much truth in Mr. Trudeau’s advertising claims, but the story behind the law enforcement actions underscores one fundamental truth: the FTC’s commitment to effective order enforcement. Kevin Trudeau is no stranger to the FTC. He...

The FTC just announced a partial settlement with Volkswagen Group of America that will return as much as $10 billion to owners and lessees of VW and Audi 2.0 liter diesel cars. As the largest false advertising case in FTC history, it’s a record-breaking win for consumers – and it’s in keeping with the law-breaking nature of the deception the FTC alleged in its lawsuit against VW. “Clean diesel” was the focus of Volkswagen’s massive marketing...

It turns out the real estate people have been right all along. A settlement with InMobi, one of world’s largest mobile ad networks, suggests that for consumers, it really is about location, location, location – or at least honoring consumers’ location privacy preferences and not tracking them without permission. The case is the FTC’s first action against the operator of a mobile ad network. What’s more, it includes an interesting COPPA count...

Short of jumping into the Tardis to consult with intergalactic medical experts, how can consumers separate the hope from the hype when evaluating claims for health products? That’s where SmartClick Media’s “Doctor Trusted” website certification program claimed to help. But an FTC lawsuit alleges that the “Doctor Trusted” seal and the “Doctor Trusted.org Consumer Protection Certificate” weren’t to be trusted. The settlement also sounds a warning...

Combine two of the most talked-about consumer protection topics – health privacy and consumer-generated online content – and what do you get? A proposed FTC settlement with Practice Fusion, the largest cloud-based electronic health records company in the country, and six compliance tips for others in the industry. One of San Francisco-based Practice Fusion’s primary products is an electronic records system for outpatient providers. In 2009, the...

The PNO handles Hart-Scott-Rodino Premerger Notification Filings for well over a thousand transactions each year. Each transaction requires the acquiring person to pay an HSR filing fee, which must be paid within two days of filing an HSR Form in order for the HSR waiting period to begin. If payment isn’t received on time, the PNO will "bounce" the filing as incomplete and delay the start of the waiting period. The FTC has recently made some...

Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act and Rules, determining whether a U.S. entity is a corporation or a non-corporate entity (like an LLC or LP) is relatively clear. For foreign entities, the answer is often not so clear. Yet this determination can have important implications for HSR reportability and the applicability of certain exemptions ( e.g., 16 CFR §§ 802.9, 802.51). The Premerger Notification Office (PNO) often receives calls asking...