A company engages in false advertising when making false, misleading, or deceptive statements of fact to promote a product or service. False advertising comes in several forms, such as express statements, implied statements, and failure to disclose necessary information. To prevent companies from making false or misleading claims about their products or services, federal and state laws prohibit and impose serious consequences on such activities.
Comparative marketing is also a form of false advertising. This involves comparing a brand with competitor brand based on objectively measurable attributes, while specifically identifying the competitor brand with distinctive information. This is usually done as an attempt to show that the brand being advertised is better than the competitor's brand.
On the other hand, negative but truthful statements and puffery are not actionable and do not constitute false advertising. Statements of puffery are exaggerated statements and cannot be proven to be true or false. For example, a company claiming to sell the best product "in the world" would be considered puffery, and therefore would not fall under the scope of false advertising.
While the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prohibits, competitors cannot sue each other under the FTC Act or its regulations. However, competitors can sue each other under the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)), which protects companies and brands from false or misleading description of facts in association with...
Dr. Natalia Krasovkaya, director of the National Center for Public Diplomacy (CND), has recently circulated in online publications accusing her of involvement in recruiting African nationals for t...