The Advertising Law Blog provides commentary and news on developing legal issues in advertising, promotional marketing, Internet, and privacy law. This blog is sponsored by the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions group at Olshan. The practice is geared to servicing the needs of the advertising, promotional marketing, and digital industries with a commitment to providing personal, efficient and effective legal service.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan’s Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, and associate Morgan Spina will present a LawPracticeCLE webinar entitled “Sweepstakes, Contests, and Giveaways: Mastering the Legal and Regulatory Landscape” on March 27 from 2:00 – 3:30 P.M. (EST).
Trump Administration guts agency’s enforcement abilities
The administration of President Donald J. Trump, largely through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, is moving rapidly to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB").
Chair of the firm's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group Andrew Lustigman will participate in a panel entitled “A New Era of Endorsements, Testimonials, and Consumer Reviews: Navigating the FTC’s Final Rule and Emerging Areas of Risk for Enforcement and Penalties” as part of ACI’s 8th Annual Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Forum on Advertising Claims Substantiation today at 1:00 P.M. at the New York City Bar Association in NYC.
Chair of the firm's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group Andrew Lustigman will participate in a panel discussion at Saint Louis University’s Gateway to Innovation: SLU Law IP, Entertainment, and Sports Law Conference on March 1, 2025, at 2:00 P.M.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, Chair of Olshan’s Intellectual Property Law Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group Mary Grieco and associate Morgan Spina published an article in Bloomberg Law entitled “New FTC Chair Likely to Keep Up Enforcement on Auto-Renewals”
Lead generators and the companies that rely on them can breathe a sigh of relief. On Friday evening, less than three days before an onerous regulation was set to go into effect, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) reversed itself, postponing the effective date by twelve months, to January 26, 2026. The regulation, known as the One-to-One Consent Rule, would have drastically hampered the lead generation business by requiring consumers to be advised, at the time of their initial consent, what companies would have the right to solicit them, even if the consumers wished to make an open-ended request to receive, for example, text messages from the lowest bidder.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, published an article in New York Law Journal entitled “What Businesses Need to Know About Anticipated FTC Leadership Changes”
With an increase in both the number of trademark applications and fraudulent trademark applications over the last several years, the USPTO has recently instituted several additional filing requirements, increased most filing fees, and added new fee categories.
Following the lead of California, which passed the first comprehensive privacy legislation in the United States in 2018, many states have now enacted their own laws governing the collection and use of personal data. In addition to California, a comprehensive privacy law is effective in the following states as of 2024: Colorado, Connecticut, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. New laws go into effect in 2025 in Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Tennessee. Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island have also passed comprehensive privacy laws that go into effect in 2026. There are active bills in the legislatures of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The laws apply to businesses that collect personal information from consumers in those states regardless of where the business is located.
Given consumers' increasing reliance on customer reviews for online purchases combined with the increasing use of AI, we can expect more regulatory (and likely plaintiff’s attorney) enforcement combating false or manipulated consumer reviews. Recognizing these trends, the FTC’s recently-effective Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials focuses heavily on fake reviews and negative review suppression. Indeed, the Final Rule explicitly bans publishing reviews and testimonials from someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated reviews, fictional people and those with no actual experience with a business’s products or services. The rule also bars businesses from suppressing negative reviews or misrepresenting that the reviews represent all or most of the reviews submitted if negative reviews have been suppressed.