Business Law

Former Price Promotions, Current Legal Risk

Former price promotions, you say? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. This isn’t just a quote from Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr or a line from Circumstances by Rush. It’s also a fitting description of the risks associated with California’s thorny and potentially unconstitutional Business & Professions Code § 17501. The combination of this statute and avaricious lawyers is...

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Children’s Privacy: Federal Regulations Are About To Change

Is Your Website “Directed to Children” Under 13? None of this matters unless you operate a website or provide an online service that is “directed to children” under the age of thirteen. Under COPPA, however, this is a holistic, i.e., mushy, question. And general businesses have gotten caught in the crosshairs. The FTC looks at...

Kevin Haley and Adam Mooney Pen MaineBiz Article on Trademarks for CBD Products

On February 7, 2024, MaineBiz published an article by attorneys Kevin Haley and Adam Mooney on the trademark issues relating to cannabis products and their suppliers, entitled, “How to find a path to trademark protection for CBD products.” Haley and Mooney discuss the difficulties of securing trademark protections for products that are legal recreationally in...

Nevada Privacy Law Goes Into Effect October 1

What happens in Vegas, may now indeed need to stay in Vegas.  Although California’s sweeping new privacy law has dominated the headlines, other states are enacting their own, different privacy laws, and it’s important to understand the differences. Partner Stacy Stitham identifies some things we should know about the new Nevada privacy law.

Web Arbitration Clauses: Federal Court Upholds “Terms of Use”

On June 7, 2019, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of retailer Wayfair LLC, and its parent company, Wayfair Inc., in a decision that both (1) upholds a web arbitration agreement and (2) provides useful guidance in presenting “terms of use” to website shoppers. What can we...

Arbitration Redux: Supreme Court Speaks Again

Just seven days after my last blog post on arbitration clauses, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia finding, yet again, that a class action waiver provision was enforceable against a consumer.  Although the decision turned on a rather nuanced question of contract interpretation, it serves as a powerful reminder of...

FTC Takes Aim at AT&T: Lessons For Multichannel Marketers

On October 28, 2014, the FTC announced that it was suing AT&T on the claim that AT&T misled “millions of its smartphone customers by charging them for ‘unlimited’ data plans while reducing their data speeds, in some cases by nearly 90 percent.”  Just 20 days earlier, it announced a $105 million settlement with AT&T over...