Welcome.

By Amy Ralph Mudge and Randal M. Shaheen on March 11, 2019 Posted in News

Change, they say, helps keep you young. We certainly hope so. We are very excited about our new home at BakerHostetler and the opportunity to add a blog to the Advertising, Marketing and Digital Media team’s highly regarded weekly newsletter. (If you aren’t already receiving the newsletter, you should be. Click here to subscribe.) Anchored by partners Linda Goldstein and Amy Mudge, BakerHostetler’s adlaw team has decades of experience and knowledge. Many of the team’s members will contribute timely, in-depth and insightful analysis of some of the more interesting developments in advertising and marketing law.

Our BakerHostetler colleagues are also serial bloggers, covering topics such as privacy, intellectual property and class actions, and we hope you’ll follow some of them as well. We look forward to rekindling our blogging relationship with many of you and to attracting new readers.

— Amy Mudge and Randy Shaheen

I Just Want to Say One Word to You – Just One Word: CBD

By Randal M. Shaheen and John P. Ferry on March 6, 2019 Posted in FDA

Picture of CBD oil If the movie The Graduate were rebooted today, this would undoubtedly be the advice that Mr. McGuire would give the young Benjamin. However, a lot of legal and regulatory questions still swirl around the future of cannabidiol (CBD) oil products. At the GMA Conference earlier this week, Sharon Mayl, senior advisor for policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – and one of the individuals tasked with overseeing the FDA’s efforts with regard to marijuana and related products – gave an assessment of where things currently stand with regard to CBD.

Mayl noted that the issues regarding CBD products can be complex and confusing and that currently there is an interagency team at the FDA meeting regularly on marijuana issues. She acknowledged that the December 2018 Farm Bill eased legal impediments to the marketing of hemp-related products but nothing in the bill removed these products from FDA authority or oversight, so any type of therapeutic benefit claim associated with CBD oil would be considered a drug claim by FDA. Continue Reading

Are Reports of the Federal Trade Commission’s Death Greatly Exaggerated?

By Randal M. Shaheen and Amy Ralph Mudge on March 5, 2019 Posted in FTC

Federal Trade Commission Doorway Sign The multiverse is abuzz about the recent Third Circuit ViroPharma decision and other like-minded courts that have placed significant limitations on the ability of the Federal Trade Commission to obtain an injunction in federal court against allegedly unlawful behavior that companies have already ceased.

The FTC Act as originally written required that the agency bring any enforcement action in an administrative proceeding. However, as anyone who has ever been involved in an administrative proceeding knows, such proceedings can move slowly (think “watching paint dry”) and do not provide for preliminary injunctive relief before any final order is issued even in situations where there could be considerable harm to consumers from an ongoing practice. Continue Reading