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46-686: The FEPA would have imposed fines of US$ 1000 or 100 hours of community service for a first time offense of selling a "Mature" or "Adult-Only" rated video game to a minor, and $ 5000 or 500 hours for each subsequent offense. The bill also called for a FTC investigation into the ESRB to ascertain whether they have been properly rating games. Similar bills have been passed in some U.S. states such as California , Michigan and Illinois , but were ruled to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n , 564 U.S. 08–1448 (2011). This bill did not become law; it

92-578: A driver of inflation for grocery prices. In August 2024, it announced it would be probing grocery prices to look for anti-competitive behavior and price gouging at chain supermarkets. In 2023, the FTC proposed a new rule that would ensure that the cancellation process of subscription services is as easy as the process of signing up. On October 16, 2024, the FTC announced the new rule, dubbed "click to cancel", requiring companies to make subscription services "as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it

138-450: A fact that was only disclosed in legalese, buried within the end user license agreement. The FTC secured a consent decree in the case. In In re Gateway Learning Corp. the FTC alleged that Gateway committed unfair and deceptive trade practices by making retroactive changes to its privacy policy without informing customers and by violating its own privacy policy by selling customer information when it had said it would not. Gateway settled

184-476: A fine of US$ 50.1 million on OMICS companies. OMICS' lawyer said that this was an unfair allegation and that OMICS would sue FTC for $ 3.11 billion in damages, saying it had caused loss of revenue and reputation. In In the Matter of Sears Holdings Management Corp. , the FTC alleged that a research software program provided by Sears was deceptive because it collected information about nearly all online behavior,

230-568: A review of the price lists, on-site training of the staff, and follow-up testing and certification on compliance with the Funeral Rule ." In the mid-1990s, the FTC launched the fraud sweeps concept where the agency and its federal, state, and local partners filed simultaneous legal actions against multiple telemarketing fraud targets. The first sweeps operation was Project Telesweep in July 1995 which cracked down on 100 business opportunity scams. In

276-578: Is a pervasive problem. It also includes a Sense of Congress that the Commission shall take appropriate action if it determines that there is a pervasive problem. This bill requires the Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) of the FTC to ensure that consumers can file complaints if they find content to be misleading or deceptive and requires the BCP to report on the number of such complaints to Congress. This bill authorizes

322-637: Is responsible for the United States National Do Not Call Registry . Title 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations CFR Title 16 – Commercial Practices is one of fifty titles comprising the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), containing the principal set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies regarding commercial practices. It is available in digital and printed form, and can be referenced online using

368-681: Is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection . The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division . The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC . The FTC was established in 1914 with the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act , signed in response to

414-599: Is to be denied a written, retainable copy of the GPL. In 1996, the FTC instituted the Funeral Rule Offenders Program (FROP), under which "funeral homes make a voluntary payment to the U.S. Treasury or appropriate state fund for an amount less than what would likely be sought if the Commission authorized filing a lawsuit for civil penalties. In addition, the funeral homes participate in the NFDA compliance program, which includes

460-412: The funeral home industry in order to protect consumers from deceptive practices. The FTC Funeral Rule requires funeral homes to provide all customers (and potential customers) with a General Price List (GPL), specifically outlining goods and services in the funeral industry, as defined by the FTC, and a listing of their prices. By law, the GPL must be presented on request to all individuals, and no one

506-555: The 19th-century monopolistic trust crisis. Since its inception, the FTC has enforced the provisions of the Clayton Act , a key antitrust statute, as well as the provisions of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C.   § 41 et seq. Over time, the FTC has been delegated with the enforcement of additional business regulation statutes and has promulgated a number of regulations (codified in Title 16 of

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552-569: The 2021 United States Supreme Court case, AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC , the Court found unanimously that the FTC did not have power under 15 U.S.C.   § 53(b) of the FTC Act, amended in 1973, to seek equitable relief in courts; it had the power to seek only injunctive relief. In 2023, Project 2025 suggested that an administration could abolish the FTC. In November 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta agreed with Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter and FTC Chair Khan, ruling

598-604: The Bureau of Competition, the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and the Bureau of Economics. The Bureau of Competition is the division of the FTC charged with elimination and prevention of "anticompetitive" business practices. It accomplishes this through the enforcement of antitrust laws, review of proposed mergers , and investigation into other non-merger business practices that may impair competition. Such non-merger practices include horizontal restraints, involving agreements between direct competitors, and vertical restraints , involving agreements among businesses at different levels in

644-470: The Code of Federal Regulations ). The broad statutory authority granted to the FTC provides it with more surveillance and monitoring abilities than it actually uses. The FTC is composed of five commissioners, who each serve seven-year terms. Members of the commission are nominated by the President and subject to Senate confirmation, and no more than three FTC members can be of the same party . One member of

690-632: The FTC authorized an administrative complaint against the merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard , Inc. The FTC alleged the deal would suppress competitors from accessing future content/games developed by Activision once the deal goes through. The FTC dropped its lawsuit on July 20, 2023. Microsoft had to restructure its deal to appease UK regulators. Microsoft reneged on promises it made in court filings by laying off 1900 employees in January 2024, signaling that it did not plan to let Activision Blizzard remain as independent as it had promised and leading

736-511: The FTC sued Meta (formally known as Facebook) for anticompetitive conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act , which prohibits improper monopolization of a market. The FTC accused Meta of buying up its competitors to stifle competition which reduced the range of services available to consumers and by creating fewer social media platforms for advertisers to target. In September 2013, a federal court closed an elusive business opportunity scheme on

782-455: The FTC to conduct an annual, random audit of retailers – sometimes referred to as a secret shopper survey – to determine how easy it is for young people to purchase Mature and Adults Only video games and report the findings to Congress. Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission

828-546: The FTC to continue to appeal the decision. In July 2021, the FTC voted unanimously to enforce the right to repair as policy and to look to take action against companies that limit the type of repair work that can be done at independent repair shops. In October 2024, following a comment by the FTC to the US Copyright Office , an exemption was granted allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment, such as McDonald's ice cream machines . In December 2020

874-597: The FTC's success in blocking or unwinding of hospital consolidations or affiliations: In 2011, the FTC successfully challenged in court the $ 195 million acquisition of Palmyra Medical Center by Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. The FTC alleged that the transaction would create a monopoly as it would "reduce competition significantly and allow the combined Phoebe/Palmyra to raise prices for general acute-care hospital services charged to commercial health plans, substantially harming patients and local employers and employees". The Supreme Court on February 19, 2013, ruled in favor of

920-465: The FTC. Similarly, court attempts by ProMedica health system in Ohio to overturn an order by the FTC to the company to unwind its 2010 acquisition of St. Luke's hospital were unsuccessful. The FTC claimed that the acquisition would hurt consumers through higher premiums because insurance companies would be required to pay more. In December 2011, an administrative judge upheld the FTC's decision, noting that

966-408: The FTC. They were banned from processing credit card transactions, though the initial monetary judgment of $ 5.8 million was suspended due to the defendant's inability to pay. In 2016, the FTC launched action against the academic journal publisher OMICS Publishing Group for producing predatory journals and organizing predatory conferences . This action, partly in response to ongoing pressure from

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1012-538: The Rockford area and would have a market share of 64%. Later in 2012, OSF announced that it had abandoned its plans to acquire Rockford Health System. The commission is headed by five commissioners, who each serve seven-year terms. Commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate . No more than three commissioners can be of the same political party . In practice, this means that two commissioners are of

1058-849: The academic community, is the first action taken by the FTC against an academic journal publisher. The complaint alleges that the defendants have been "deceiving academics and researchers about the nature of its publications and hiding publication fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars". It additionally notes that "OMICS regularly advertises conferences featuring academic experts who were never scheduled to appear in order to attract registrants" and that attendees "spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on registration fees and travel costs to attend these scientific conferences." Manuscripts are also sometimes held hostage, with OMICS refusing to allow submissions to be withdrawn and thereby preventing resubmission to another journal for consideration. Library scientist Jeffrey Beall has described OMICS as among

1104-553: The agency also alleged that the companies created a rebate system that prioritized high rebates from drug manufacturers, among other factors. The agency stated that several PBMs failed to provide documents in a timely manner and warned that it could take the companies to court to force them to comply, during the announcment in the preliminary findings. In September 2024, the FTC sued the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for allegedly engaging in anti-competitive practices that increased their profits while artificially inflating

1150-473: The agency requested documents from the six largest PBMs as part of its investigation. The three largest – UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx , Cigna's Express Scripts and CVS Health's Caremark – manage about 80% of U.S. prescriptions. The top three PBMs share a parent company with a large medical insurance company . The FTC accused these companies of raising drug prices through conflicts of interest , vertical integration , concentration, and exclusivity provisions;

1196-459: The behavior of ProMedica health system and St. Luke's was indeed anticompetitive. The court ordered ProMedica to divest St. Luke's to a buyer that would be approved by the FTC within 180 days of the date of the order. In November 2011, the FTC filed a lawsuit alleging that the proposed acquisition of Rockford by OSF would drive up prices for general acute-care inpatient services as OSF would face only one competitor (SwedishAmerican health system) in

1242-484: The biggest pay raises. It also allows workers to leave abusive work environments and can prevent some doctors from having to leave medicine once they leave a practice. The ban was put on hold by U.S. District Judge Ada Brown on July 3, 2024, but then upheld on appeal by U.S. District Judge Kelley B. Hodge on July 23, 2024. On August 20, 2024, a federal court in Texas overturned the FTC's ban on non-compete agreements, which

1288-562: The body serves as FTC Chair at the President's pleasure, with Commissioner Lina Khan having served as chair since June 2021. Following the Supreme Court decisions against Standard Oil and American Tobacco in May 1911, the first version of a bill to establish a commission to regulate interstate trade was introduced on January 25, 1912, by Oklahoma congressman Dick Thompson Morgan . He would make

1334-487: The company a monopoly, and ordering Google to sell its Chrome web browser. The FTC ruled to ban virtually all non-competes nationwide in April 2024. The agency estimates 30 million workers are bound by these clauses and only excludes senior executives from the ban on enforcing non-competes. The agency believes that this will allow workers to find better working conditions and pay, since switching companies, on average, provides

1380-542: The complaint by entering into a consent decree with the FTC that required it to surrender some profits and placed restrictions upon Gateway for the following 20 years. In addition to prospective analysis of the effects of mergers and acquisitions, the FTC has recently resorted to retrospective analysis and monitoring of consolidated hospitals. Thus, it also uses retroactive data to demonstrate that some hospital mergers and acquisitions are hurting consumers, particularly in terms of higher prices. Here are some recent examples of

1426-579: The courts. With the 1912 presidential election decided in favor of the Democrats and Woodrow Wilson , Morgan reintroduced a slightly amended version of his bill during the April 1913 special session. The national debate culminated in Wilson's signing of the FTC Act on September 26, 1914, with additional tightening of regulations in the Clayton Antitrust Act three weeks later. The new FTC would absorb

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1472-412: The defendants from falsely representing that their journals engage in peer review, that their journals are included in any academic journal indexing service or any measurement of the extent to which their journals are cited. It also requires that the defendants clearly and conspicuously disclose all costs associated with submitting or publishing articles in their journals." In April 2019, the court imposed

1518-530: The first offense; $ 5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense. This provision is not aimed at punishing retailers who act in good faith to enforce the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) system. That’s why retailers would have an affirmative defense if they were shown an identification they believed to be valid or have a system in place to display and enforce the ESRB system. Similar prohibitions had become law in

1564-494: The first speech on the House floor advocating its creation on February 21, 1912. Though the initial bill did not pass, the questions of trusts and antitrust dominated the 1912 election. Most political party platforms in 1912 endorsed the establishment of a federal trade commission with its regulatory powers placed in the hands of an administrative board, as an alternative to functions previously and necessarily exercised so slowly through

1610-463: The genesis of this bill was the revelation that the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had included, through embedded code that was discovered and made accessible to the public, sexually explicit content inconsistent with the game’s Mature rating (commonly known as the Hot Coffee mod ). This bill requires the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether what happened with GTA: San Andreas

1656-505: The last several months in California, Michigan, and Illinois, but were later overturned. Since the bill relies on the video game industry to continue rating the appropriateness of games for minors, this bill requires an annual, independent analysis of game ratings. This analysis will help ensure that the ESRB ratings system accurately reflects the content in each game and that the ratings system does not change significantly over time. Part of

1702-518: The list price of insulin. The agency is seeking to prohibit the PBMs from favoring medicines because certain pharaceuticals make them more money. In February 2024, the FTC challenged the Kroger-Albertsons merger , arguing it would drive up grocery and pharmacy prices, worsen service, and lower wages and working conditions. In March 2024, the FTC released a report that found higher profit margins as

1748-504: The most egregious of predatory publishers . In November 2017, a federal court in the Court for the District of Nevada granted a preliminary injunction that: "prohibits the defendants from making misrepresentations regarding their academic journals and conferences, including that specific persons are editors of their journals or have agreed to participate in their conferences. It also prohibits

1794-450: The opposition party. However, three members of the FTC throughout its history have been without party affiliation , with the most recent independent, Pamela Jones Harbour , serving from 2003 to 2009. (chair) Yale Law School ( JD ) Yale Law School (JD) Yale Law School (JD) University of Utah Law School (JD) University of Virginia School of Law (JD) Notes As of 2021, there have been: The FTC has three main bureaus:

1840-635: The request of the FTC, namely "Money Now Funding"/"Cash4Businesses". The FTC alleged that the defendants misrepresented potential earnings, violated the National Do Not Call Register , and violated the FTC's Business Opportunity Rule in preventing a fair consumer evaluation of the business. This was one of the first definitive actions taken by any regulator against a company engaging in transaction laundering, where almost US$ 6 million were processed illicitly. In December 2018, two defendants, Nikolas Mihilli and Dynasty Merchants, LLC, settled with

1886-597: The same industry (such as suppliers and commercial buyers). The FTC shares enforcement of antitrust laws with the Department of Justice . However, while the FTC is responsible for civil enforcement of antitrust laws, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice has the power to bring both civil and criminal action in antitrust matters. The Bureau of Consumer Protection's mandate is to protect consumers against unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce. With

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1932-461: The staff and duties of Bureau of Corporations , previously established under the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903. The FTC could additionally challenge "unfair methods of competition" and enforce the Clayton Act's more specific prohibitions against certain price discrimination, vertical arrangements, interlocking directorates , and stock acquisitions. In 1984, the FTC began to regulate

1978-420: The written consent of the commission, Bureau attorneys enforce federal laws related to consumer affairs and rules promulgated by the FTC. Its functions include investigations, enforcement actions, and consumer and business education. Areas of principal concern for this bureau are: advertising and marketing, financial products and practices, telemarketing fraud , privacy and identity protection, etc. The bureau also

2024-741: Was originally scheduled to take effect on September 4, 2024. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown said the FTC did not have the authority to issue the ban, which she said was "unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation." Victoria Graham, an FTC spokeswoman responded to the ruling by stating "We are seriously considering a potential appeal..." The FTC successfully blocked Nvidia from purchasing ARM holdings in 2022. The FTC has pursued lawsuits against companies to lower drug prices, including for insulin and for inhalers. The FTC launched its investigation into pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in 2022. In July 2024, it released an interim report on its 2-year investigation into pharmacy benefit managers ,

2070-487: Was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and expired at the end of the 109th Congress without further action. The centerpiece of this bill is a prohibition against any business for selling or renting a Mature, Adults-Only, or Ratings Pending game to a person who is younger than seventeen. On-site store managers would be subject to a fine of $ 1,000 or 100 hours of community service for

2116-460: Was to sign up." Khan said in a interview that the new rule is designed so that if consumers signed up online, they must also be able to cancel on the same website in the same number of steps. The rule’s final provisions will go into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register . It also targeted airlines and credit card companies over junk fees and high prices. In 2023,

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