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Melissa Landau Steinman

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Melissa Steinman focuses on advertising and marketing, promotions, consumer protection, antitrust, trade regulation, and consumer product safety. In addition to counseling and compliance, she also actively represents clients in government investigations and defends clients against class actions. Melissa represents a broad array of clients, including consumer products and hospitality brands, media and tech companies, retailers, gaming and software companies, start-ups, celebrities, producers, charities, and trade associations. She is particularly well known for her deep knowledge of promotions law, including sweepstakes, contests, gift cards, loyalty programs, and charitable promotions, and she speaks and writes frequently on the topic in the United States and internationally.

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Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) jointly hosted a public meeting of the interagency “Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Business Practices.” The meeting was a continuation of an effort, initially announced by President Biden in March, to “strengthen interagency efforts to root out and stop illegal corporate behavior that hikes prices on American families through anti-competitive, unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent business practices,” according to a press release.

The August 1 meeting brought together a number of different agencies to discuss their actions to lower prices for Americans, including the FTC and the DOJ, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).Continue Reading Federal Agencies Increase Focus on Pricing Enforcement

Consumer products regulated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) may soon be denied entry into the United States unless the importer of record electronically files a detailed product certification with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In late 2023, the CPSC published a proposed CPSC rule that will require that importers of regulated consumer products eFile Certificates of Compliance at import.

Since 2008, importers and domestic manufacturers have been required to maintain Certificates of Compliance and to provide distributors and retailers a reasonable means to access the certificate, but the certificates did not need to be filed at import. In June, the CPSC expanded its beta program testing the eFiling system and issued an “eFiling Quick Start Guide,” which provided additional information about the program and predicted that “full implementation of eFiling will occur in or around 2025.”Continue Reading Get Ready to Comply with CPSC’s Upcoming eFiling Requirement

Join us as we spotlight select chapters of Venable’s popular Advertising Law Tool Kit, which helps marketing teams navigate their organization’s legal risk. Click here to download the entire Tool Kit, and tune in to the Ad Law Tool Kit Show podcast, to hear the author of this chapter dive deeper into the issue of social media, influencers, and endorsements in this week’s episode.

Advertisers increasingly view social media as an opportunity to have influencers speak positively about their products and services. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made it clear, however, that the rules regarding disclosure of material connections also apply in the social media context. Indeed, the FTC recently updated its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising to clarify them and address questions triggered by new technologies (such as computer-generated influencers) and platforms. Over the years, the Commission has pursued numerous cases against influencers, agencies, and the companies that hire them.Continue Reading Social Media, Influencers, and Endorsements: An Excerpt from the Advertising Law Tool Kit

Join us over the next few months as we spotlight select chapters of Venable’s popular Advertising Law Tool Kit, which helps marketing teams navigate their organization’s legal risk. Click here to download the entire Tool Kit, and tune in to the Ad Law Tool Kit Show podcast, to hear the authors of this chapter dive deeper into the issue of product safety and recalls in this week’s episode. 

On rare occasions, notwithstanding the best of engineering design and testing, a consumer product contains a manufacturing or design defect, or a failure of adequate instructions, that results in its being unsafe for use and a potential for causing bodily harm. This most often reveals itself when consumers bring the matter to the attention of a manufacturer, retailer, or direct-response marketer, or upon receipt of a notice from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).Continue Reading Product Safety and Recalls: An Excerpt from the Advertising Law Tool Kit

If your business offers a loyalty program in conjunction with a gift card, you likely already know that Section 520-e of New York’s General Business Law took effect December 10, 2023. This new law gives consumers a set grace period to use their credit card reward points when certain changes (e.g., modification, cancellation, closure, or termination) are made to a “reward, loyalty, or other incentive program.”

Specifically, under the new law, “[i]f any credit card account or rewards program is modified, cancelled, closed or terminated,” the issuer must provide notice to the card holder as soon as possible, but no later than 45 days of the action. Then, unless the customer has engaged in fraud or misuse of the account, starting with the date on which the notice is sent, the holder shall have 90 days to redeem, exchange, or otherwise use any accumulated credit card points, subject to the availability of rewards.

The new provision defines “modification,” as one that has the effect of “eliminating points, reducing the value of points, affecting the ability of a holder to accumulate points, limiting or reducing rewards availability, limiting a holder’s use of points or the credit card account, otherwise diminishing the value of the rewards program or the credit card account to the holder or changing the obligations of the holder with respect to the rewards program or credit card account.”Continue Reading Reminder: New York’s Credit Card Reward and Loyalty Program Law Is Now in Effect

The first quarter of 2023 hasn’t started much better for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry than the fourth quarter of 2022 ended. Last week, in Friel v. Dapper Labs, Inc et al., a federal judge declined to dismiss a class action complaint alleging securities law violations, finding that the Plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) sold on the NBA’s Top Shot platform could be securities. The ruling was the first of its kind, and while the court expressly stated that it is narrow in scope and other NFTs may not be securities, the holding could ultimately have far-reaching implications for other NFT projects and marketplaces as applied, particularly in today’s uncertain environment.

NBA Top Shot is an NFT platform, owned and operated by Dapper Labs, that allows consumers to buy, sell, and trade “Moments” NFTs (digital video clips of player highlights) on Dapper Lab’s Flow Blockchain. On February 22, 2023, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Dapper Labs’ motion to dismiss, holding that although “it is a close call and the Court’s decision is narrow,” Moments NFTs qualify as securities under the Howey test, the four-pronged test created by the Supreme Court in SEC v. Howey Co. to determine whether certain transactions qualify as investment transactions and are thus regulated securities. In its decision to deny the motion to dismiss, the court focused on prongs two and three of the Howey test.Continue Reading Layup or Airball? Court Holds NBA Top Shot NFTs May Be a Security in Friel v. Dapper Labs

Like clockwork, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued its Adjustments to Civil Penalty Amounts for 2023. As instructed by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015, the FTC and other similarly situated federal agencies ring in the new year not with champagne and confetti, but with adjusted maximum civil penalty…

Doing good doesn’t get old. But marketing leaders know that effective promotion of a company’s charitable giving requires a subtle combination of bedrock advertising principles with a few twists. It’s often here that marketing and legal meet at the eleventh hour before a campaign goes live. Understanding the bounds of federal, state, and local laws that regulate charitable fundraising before these efforts launch helps marketing teams to be more efficient.

Knowing what type of giving campaign is in play is critical for understanding what regulatory requirements apply. While options abound, some perennial favorites include:Continue Reading Syncing Marketing and Legal: Compliance Considerations for Cause-Related Marketing