Earnings Claims and the Amended FTC Disclosure Rule: Lamenting a Lost Opportunity

Let's not be overly critical of the Amended FTC Disclosure Rule, which was promulgated in January 2007 after being 10 years in the development stage. As Stephen Toporoff of the Federal Trade Commission ('FTC') has convinced me in recent discussions, amending a federal regulation is an arduous task. In this instance, it required an extensive amount of background research on the history of the original Disclosure Rule, several hearings, careful review of the hundreds of comments, careful examination of the UFOC Guidelines and their origins and assumptions, comparing them with the original Disclosure Rule's format, and testing in many cases the care and thought that went behind the original language of the UFOC Guidelines. The Amended Disclosure Rule was no shot from the hip. In light of this background information, and considering simply the politics of federal agencies, it is not very surprising that it took a decade for the FTC to issue the Amended Disclosure Rule.

22 minute readFebruary 28, 2007 at 08:25 AM
By
Rupert M. Barkoff
Earnings Claims and the Amended FTC Disclosure Rule: Lamenting a Lost Opportunity

Let's not be overly critical of the Amended FTC Disclosure Rule, which was promulgated in January 2007 after being 10 years in the development stage. As Stephen Toporoff of the Federal Trade Commission ('FTC') has convinced me in recent discussions, amending a federal regulation is an arduous task.

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