As with any political compromise, experts reacted with mixed feelings Thursday when, for the first time in the history of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued guidelines that actually reduce the FTC’s discretion in bringing enforcement actions for “unfair methods of competition.”
“It’s not surprising that you have a product of bipartisan negotiation and consensus building that leaves something to be desired in the eyes of many,” attorney Terry Calvani told CorpCounsel.com. But Calvani, a former commissioner and acting FTC chairman now of counsel with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, saw the guidance as “a substantial improvement [with] some measure of substantive guidance for business.”
