Archive for the 'Advertising' Category
November 25, 2014
Misleading advertising is squarely part of Canadian competition law. Violation of the Competition Act’s civil or criminal misleading advertising provisions can also lead to significant liability for companies or individuals. As a recent reminder of this, the Competition Bureau has announced that water heater supplier National Home Services (National) has agreed to pay a $7 million penalty for alleged false or misleading claims made by its sales agents.
November 13, 2014
Performance claims remain a popular advertising strategy for many brands. These can include statements about a product’s speed, reliability or other performance. Performance claims in Canada, however, are subject to both the “general misleading advertising” sections of the Competition Act (Act) and a stand-alone performance claims provision (section 74.01(1)(b) of the Act).
November 11, 2014
Guest post by Shannon Harell
(Information Law Group)
The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has been very active in its enforcement efforts in the past couple of months. In addition to other actions which we have blogged about, the FTC recently sent dozens of warning letters to advertisers in two separate efforts. In September, the FTC sent letters admonishing companies for their failure to make adequate disclosures in an effort dubbed “Operation Full Disclosure.” Then, in October, the FTC sent letters to companies for their potentially misleading “oxo degradable” claims in violation of the FTC’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (or “Green Guides”).
October 31, 2014
This is the second of three posts with our conference materials from the recent Canadian Society of Association Executives’ (CSAE) Annual Conference in Niagara (for the first post see below). I presented with Mark Katz from Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in Toronto. This post discusses competition law issues that can arise in the context of association codes of ethics, some recent key cases and best practices to minimize risk in relation to association codes.
October 21, 2014
Guest post by Jacob Kojfman
(Vancouver Tech Law Blog)
If you do anything online, you are going to be subject to some sort of terms and conditions and privacy policies. It can take over 40 years to read all the terms and conditions of all the licenses you may be subject to, so most people just click “I agree” without actually reading it, or even thinking that they are entering into a binding contract.
September 24, 2014
Canada’s Competition Bureau (the “Bureau”) has been working over the past year or two to update its competition law compliance guidelines and policies. Competition law compliance has also figured prominently in recent remarks by Canada’s new Commissioner of Competition, John Pecman (see for example: here). As part of the Bureau’s initiative to raise competition compliance awareness, on September 18th the Bureau issued a revised draft Corporate Compliance Programs Bulletin for public comment (see: here and here).
September 23, 2014
In the advertising law world, general impressions matter – a lot. In Canada, the federal Competition Act even includes specific sections that provide that the general impression of a claim (i.e., not merely the literal meaning of an advertising claim or what may be included in disclaimers or contracts) is to be taken into account by a court or the Competition Tribunal in determining whether or not a claim is false or misleading.
September 8, 2014
In an interesting case that caught my eye earlier today, the U.S. FTC announced a proposed settlement with Texas-based Applied Food Sciences Inc. (AFS) in relation to allegedly “baseless” green coffee extract weight loss claims.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
