As readers of this blog know, Pam looks at OSHA’s website often to stay up to date on news that impacts manufacturers.  I tend to look at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s website to see if there are any recent orders or news items that impact manufacturers or distributors from a corporate compliance perspective.  The FTC tends to focus on two different areas:  (1) protecting consumers from deceptive or fraudulent practices in the marketplace; and (2) protecting competition by enforcing antitrust laws.

One area of the website that I would recommend is the FTC’s Business Center Blog.  For instance, this week, the Business Center Blog reported on a multi-million dollar settlement with a company in Texas that the FTC claimed made “baseless weight-loss claims about its green coffee extract to retailers, who repeated those claims in marketing finished products to consumers.”  In another post, the FTC Business Center Blog reports on a recent scheme impacting businesses where “a hacker poses as a senior executive and asks an employee to complete a financial transaction, like a confidential business investment or a payment to a vendor.  Once money is wired to a bogus account, it can be nearly impossible to recover.”

In addition to the Business Center Blog, the FTC’s website has a lot of information that can be helpful to manufacturers and distributors.  The website has an entire section on advertising and marketing, including “Made in the USA” claims.  In addition, I am often asked to counsel clients on their warranties and the FTC’s “Businessperson’s Guide to Federal Warranty Law” is one of the resources that I use during these engagements.