Prepared Food Photos is coming to terms with the financial consequences of its relentless pursuit of massive damages for alleged infringement in its copyright in individual stock photographs. Two years ago, it sent its standard demand letter to a Clyde’s Chicken King, a family-owned fast food joint in Port Barre and Opelousas Louisiana, objecting to […]
If the Supreme Court rules in the CFSA case that the CFPB’s funding is unconstitutional, Congress might fund the Bureau via annual appropriations. I wondered what that would mean. The FTC, another consumer protection agency, offers a clue. Now the agencies are not identical; the FTC has antitrust responsibilities and while the two agencies have […]
I plan to survey participants in the Teaching Consumer Law Conference, to be held May 17-18 in Santa Fe, about various matters, and then present the results at the conference. I’ve posted below multiple-choice questions I am thinking about asking. I’m also hoping to follow each question with an invitation to say more. Are there […]
In 2015, consumers sued the manufacturers of KIND products –first over the company’s use of the word “healthy” in describing its products, and then over the “All Natural/Non-GMO” claim on product packaging. The class action included claims for violation of several state laws. After class certification and discovery, the district court excluded the testimony of […]
The Department of Education today approved roughly $6 billion in student loan relief for more than 300,000 students who attended The Art Institutes, a network of for-profit colleges that was plagued by fraud allegations before completely shutting down in September 2023. The chain’s parent company, Education Management Corporation, reached a nearly $100 million settlement with […]
The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a ban on consumer uses of methylene chloride, a chemical that is widely used as a paint stripper but is known to cause liver cancer and other health problems. The EPA said its action will protect Americans from health risks while allowing certain commercial uses to continue with robust […]
This looks like important research bearing on the issue of junk fees, among other things. From the Bureau’s newsroom: Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new report that suggests consumers tend to pay more for products that have more complex pricing structures. The report is based on experiments with multiple rounds of […]
The Federal Communications Commission announced yesterday that it fined the nation’s largest wireless carriers for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized disclosure. Sprint and T-Mobile – which have merged since the investigation began – face fines of more than $12 million […]
It’s been years since I have had to litigate the issue of whether the inclusion of a trademark in the domain name for a web site about the trademark holder has Lanham Act ramifications. I rather thought that issue was settled by such cases as Lamparello and Bosley. The final nail in the coffin was […]
The Federal Trade Commission just updated its Health Breach Notification Rule to revise definitions and clarify its coverage to include developers of health mobile apps and other technology. The rule, which requires vendors to notify affected consumers and the FTC following a data breach affecting personal health records, also requires additional information in notices to […]