A Meta lawyer told the FTC’s five commissioners at a hearing Tuesday that the consumer protection agency doesn’t have authority to modify the agreement without the company’s consent.

Columbus, Ohio-based leftchannel Content Design Studio was enlisted to design a modern digital art display under the creative direction of Alberto Scirocco for the iconic Sheraton Dallas Hotel.

Leftchannel create traditional animation for the global entertainment leader's official reveal trailer for NHL 21, EA SPORTS' AAA game featuring cover athlete Alexander "The Great Eight" Ovechkin.

August 16, 2005 - FreeCreditReports.com, a subsidiary of Experian, has agreed to settle a law suit with the Federal Trade Commission over false and deceptive advertising claims. The FTC had accused Experian of using the offer of a free credit report to consumers as a lure to get them to subscribe to a paid credit monitoring service. The suit alleged that consumers were not told that they would be billed for credit monitoring unless they cancelled the service within 30 days.

On April 23, the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to issue a new rule prohibiting the use of non-compete agreements for most U.S. workers. It is estimated that approximately 30 million workers are currently bound by such agreements, which prevent them from changing employers in their industry.

Under a new proposed rule, the FTC would ban employers from saddling workers with non-compete agreements that prohibit them from working at competitors. 

The FTC's new rule has triggered a lawsuit from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, raising concerns about legal costs and economic impact on businesses.

Proposed Rule to Ban Noncompete Clauses: A Game-Changer for Workers and Competition

Proposed Rule to Ban Noncompete Clauses: A Game-Changer for Workers and Competition

When Lina Khan was in law school back in 2017, she wrote a law review article called 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox,' that went kinda viral in policy circles. In it, she argued that antitrust enforcement in the U.S. was behind the times. For decades, regulators had focused narrowly on consumer welfare, and they'd bring companies to court only when they thought consumers were being harmed by things like rising prices. But in the age of digital platforms like Amazon and Facebook, Khan argued in the article, the time had come for a more proactive approach to antitrust.

Just four years later, President Biden appointed Lina Khan to be the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, one of the main government agencies responsible for enforcing antitrust in America, putting her in the rare position of putting some of her ideas into practice.

Now, two years into the job, Khan has taken some big swings at big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft. But the FTC has also faced a couple of big losses in the courts. On today's show, a conversation with FTC Chair Lina Khan on what it's like to try to turn audacious theory into bureaucratic practice, the FTC's new lawsuit against Amazon, and what it all means for business as usual.

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The FTC thinks Amazon hurts small businesses and consumers. Ron Knox of The Institute for Local Self-Reliance agrees.

The Federal Trade Commission released a report Thursday slamming social media platforms including Facebook's parent company, Meta, as well as TikTok, Google-owned YouTube, Snap and other online services over privacy and youth safety concerns.

A divided FTC adopted a powerful rule that requires companies to make it just as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one.

Attorney General Jennings announced Tuesday that the Delaware Department of Justice’s Investor Protection Unit is participating in a consolidated nationwide enforcement action to disrupt a fraudulent precious metals scheme that has solicited more than $180 million from seniors and other investors. The Delaware Department of Justice, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and 29 other […]

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while we put the finishing touches on DCI’s new 2024-25 Economic Report on Pharmaceutical Wholesalers and Specialty Distributors.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the redacted version of administrative complaint against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). The FTC rightly calls out how the gross-to-net bubble can raise patients’ out-of-pocket costs, while also acknowledging how rebates can reduce a plan's (but not the patient’s) costs. Apparently, the FTC believes that PBMs’ customers are pretty dumb, because PBMs are able to prevent plans from “appreciating” such healthcare financing dynamics.

Section V.E. of the complaint (starting on page 23) focuses on the PBMs’ alleged unlawful conduct related to preferring high-list/high-rebate insulin products over versions with lower list prices. I thought it would therefore be fun to take the Wayback Machine to November 2021, when I wrote about this specific topic.

Below, you can review my commentary about the warped incentives behind Viatris’ dual-pricing strategy for its interchangeable biosimilar of Lantus. Much of the FTC’s description of the drug channel aligns with my commentary. But before you fist pump too hard for Ms. Khan’s FTC, you should pause to reflect on the agency’s legal theories in light of plans’ revealed preferences.

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The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the first interchangeable biosimilar insulin product: the insulin glargine-yfgn injection from Viatris. Read the FDA’s press release.

Alas, I’m sad to report that the warped incentives baked into the U.S. drug channel will limit the impact of this impressive breakthrough.

Viatris is being forced to launch both a high-priced and a low-priced version of the biosimilar. However, only the high-list/high-rebate, branded version will be available on Express Scripts’ largest commercial formulary. Express Scripts will block both the branded reference product and the lower-priced, unbranded—but also interchangeable—version. Meanwhile, Prime Therapeutics will place both versions on its formularies, leaving the choice up to its plan sponsor clients.

Consequently, many commercial payers will adopt the more expensive product instead of the identical—but cheaper—version. As usual, patients will be the ultimate victims of our current drug pricing system.

Below, I explain the weird economics behind this decision, highlight the negative impact on patients, and speculate on what this all could mean for biosimilars’ future. Until plan sponsors break their addiction to rebates, today’s U.S. drug channel problems will remain.
Read more »

Agencies with healthcare clients in pharmaceuticals, healthcare services, digital health apps, or health-related connected devices such as wearables should take note that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) final rule updating its Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) that took effect on July 29, 2024. The FTC considers a breach to include a covered entity’s unauthorized disclosure […]

Effective on October 21st of this year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a new final rule that is intended to better combat ​“fake” reviews and testimonials by prohibiting the sale or purchase of “fake reviews” as well as granting the agency the opportunity to seek civil penalties against ​willful violators. The FTC made only […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Tuesday that it will be taking action against the online cash app and neobank Dave, which it says used “misleading marketing to deceive consumers.” At issue is how Dave marketed $500 cash advances to consumers that it rarely offered, and the “Express Fee” it charged if customers wanted […]

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A powerful Senate Democrat is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Zoom for deceptive practices, adding to the growing chorus of concerns over the popular video chat software's privacy and security flaws . Several state attorneys general are also probing Zoom, after users, including government officials, reported harassment, known as "Zoombombing," on the platform. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the ranking member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter Friday to the FTC. In the letter , obtained by NPR, Brown said Zoom had made "deceptive" claims to users that their communications would remain private. Brown said Zoom incorrectly suggested its service offered end-to-end data encryption, which means that communications couldn't be accessed by anyone other than the sender and the recipient at any point. Zoom walked back on Wednesday its claim of end-to-end encryption. In a statement, it said, "While we never intended to deceive any of our customers, we

Bradley and Karen enjoy and discuss Molly De Blanc's keynote at the first annual CopyleftConf, entitled The Margins of Software Freedom, followed by an exclusive interview with Molly!

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley mentioned (without the title) the film, When a Stranger Calls, which is indeed a real movie, not a TV movie, and was from the late 1970s — although Bradley saw it on TV sometime in the 1980s. (02:15)

Segment 1 (04:11)

A recording of Molly De Blanc's keynote at the first annual (2019) CopyleftConf, entitled entitled The Margins of Software Freedom. Slides for Molly's talk are available on her gitlab account.

Segment 2 (20:11)

Bradley and Karen talk about the keynote and set up the interview.

Segment 3 (23:56)

Extended interview with Molly from on site at CopyleftConf 2019!

Segment 4 (34:06)

• Bradley and Karen discuss what ideas Molly's interview got them thinking about.
• Bradley wrote a blog post about Delta's anti-union marketing. (40:50)
• Molly De Blanc is now an employee at the GNOME Foundation and President of the Open Source Initiative (52:53)

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Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).



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(United States Ninth Circuit) - Reversed district court’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s enforcement action against Defendant for alleged fraud in precious metal sales. Defendant maintained that there was an exception in the Commodity Exchange Act for retail commodity sales. Held that the burden was on the Defendant to prove that the exception applied and the exception could be satisfied if the commodity sat in a third-party depository. However, that was not the case in this suit. Plaintiff was not barred from bringing suit and the action should not have been dismissed. Remanded for further proceedings.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Restitution award vacated. The FTC sued Defendant for several violations of consumer protection statutes. The trial court found for the FTC, entered a permanent injunction against Defendant and ordered $5 million in restitution to the FTC. The appeals court affirmed the judgment as to the violations of consumer statutes and the injunction but held that restitution was not authorized by section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Different digital styles to choose from!

Online only.

 

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