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Latest from Venable LLP

In February 2018, the FTC teamed up with the Missouri Attorney General’s office in filing a complaint against a prize promotions company and others that allegedly operated a large-scale deceptive prize scam targeting the elderly. A little more than a year later, the FTC and the Missouri AG’s office announced that they reached a settlement to the tune of $30 million. The settlement is comprised of $21 million in cash, and the remainder will be…
The District of Columbia has adopted a “pay-to-play” law that bans political contributions from city contractors, as well as personal political contributions from their senior officers. Violators may forfeit contracts, face disqualification on bidding for up to four years, and pay civil penalties. The law takes effect on November 4, 2020. Other major municipalities, such as Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia have similar laws that either restrict political contributions from contractors and their principals,…
As they say, everything’s bigger in Texas, including initial coin offerings. A Texas federal court recently unsealed a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against a Texas-based company (the “Company”) that presents itself as the “world’s first decentralized bank” and claims to have provided “the largest ICO to date.”1 Among other things, the Company is accused of engaging in the offering of securities without properly registering with the SEC and defrauding…
CU Ledger, a consortium of U.S. credit unions, announced on Monday, March 11, that it will work with IBM to develop blockchain solutions to improve services such as identity authentication and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance. CU Ledger also indicated it is looking to blockchain to improve payments and lending. Marie Wieck, General Manager, IBM Blockchain explained that through their collaboration, “credit unions will be able to cooperate and receive shared value from quickly exchanging sensitive data…
Amazon has just announced Project Zero to potentially assist brand owners in combatting counterfeit goods by removing products likely to be fake from the online retailer’s platform. Project Zero would allow brand owners to designate product listings for removal, instead of undergoing Amazon’s prior reporting and removal process, which required brand owners to report counterfeit products to an internal Amazon team for investigation prior to removal. So far, Amazon has tested the Project Zero pilot…
Three things to remember when making claims: always ensure that you have the appropriate substantiation—I forget the other two. Last week, the Second Circuit issued an order vacating the Southern District of New York’s dismissal of an FTC complaint alleging that Quincy Bioscience falsely advertised a memory supplement, known as Prevagen. A little background: Quincy represented that Prevagen improved memory—and that studies proved as much. Advertising through multiple mediums, Quincy claimed Prevagen “improves memory” and…
Since updating its Endorsement Guides in 2015 to keep pace with the meteoric rise of social media and influencers in marketing, the FTC has placed a significant emphasis on the need to disclose material connections between advertisers and endorsers. Through its Guides, informal business guidance, blog posts, warning letters, and multiple enforcement actions, the FTC has deployed virtually all of the tools in its proverbial tool box to combat what it…
There is no denying that, at times, the express claims made on dietary supplement labels may seem to convey a broader implied claim to the consumer regarding the supplement’s performance benefits. While that may be true, last month the Ninth Circuit confirmed that plaintiffs cannot successfully allege that a lawful “structure/function” claim misleadingly implies that a dietary supplement will treat, cure, or prevent a disease under state law. In so deciding, the court found that…
The Federal Trade Commission suffered a significant blow yesterday. In a decision that many saw coming—bloggers here included—the Third Circuit curtailed authority the FTC has been using for decades to confront allegedly unlawful past conduct. The decision has a direct impact on the ability of the FTC to obtain injunctions against defendants for alleged past misdeeds. In its ruling, the Third Circuit held that the FTC can only go directly into federal court where it…
Twombly and Iqbal—two names that invoke fond memories of the first year of law school for the (much) younger attorneys—have defined the bar that each plaintiff must meet to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Walk into any first-year civil procedure class and you’ll hear the students muttering the following like a nursery rhyme or a page from a Dr. Seuss book, “Twombly said ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is…