Law Commons^™

Federal Trade Commission - False And Misleading Advertising

Michigan Law Review

The law provided neither practical remedies nor suitable means of preventing false and misleading advertising before the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914. The doctrine of caveat emptor had long prevented the effectual protection of misled customers and of competitors consequently injured. True, competitors could enjoin or recover damages-for injury by misleading advertising which took the form of common law "unfair competition." The courts had found no great difficulty in extending established common law principles to make unlawful such obvious violations of the proprietary rights of particular competitors as "simulation" and "disparagement." Although there is little question …