Hunton Retail Law Resource

Coming on the heels of its Social Media Data Practices report, the FTC announced that it will hold a virtual workshop on February 25, 2025 examining “The Attention Economy: Monopolizing Kids’ Time Online.” The event will convene researchers, technologists, child development and legal experts, consumer advocates and industry professionals to discuss design features that keep children and teens engaged online. The topics to be covered include research relating to whether certain features lead to more engagement, the psychological and physical impacts of design features on youth well-being, and the intersection between design, well-being, and the law. The FTC is taking expressions of interest from potential panelists until November 15, 2024.

The FTC has settled a case with a company operating an artificial intelligence-enabled “writing assistant” service. Among the use cases Rytr LLC offered was one that would craft testimonials and reviews, allowing users to select desired tone (e.g., “formal,” “funny,” “convincing”), keywords and phrases, level of creativity (e.g., “optimal,” “high,” “max”), and the number of reviews sought. Based on this user input, Rytr’s AI service would then generate genuine-sounding, detailed reviews quickly and with little user effort.

In California, shoppers will no longer be offered plastic bags at the grocery store checkout. Under a new law, effective January 1, 2026, single-use shopping bags are banned from any point of sale. This includes bags made from plastic, paper, or other materials that are not recycled paper or certified reusable bags. However, the ban does not apply to bags used before the point of sale, such as produce bags and overwrap for fresh meat.

Last summer, on June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Although the decision did not address diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) initiatives outside of the higher education context, parallels were immediately drawn to corporate DEI programs. Over the past year, conservative activist groups have challenged a variety of corporate DEI initiatives, and although this has resulted in a mixed bag of success, companies should be thoughtful about their DEI approaches moving forward as ...

When developing a retail shopping center, landlords have a vision for what that shopping center will look like. This vision comes to life as the shopping center is leased up and tenants open for business. In order to preserve that vision, and ultimately the marketability of the shopping center, landlords will craft permitted use, prohibited use and exclusive use concepts into their leases to ensure that the shopping center occupants continue to operate in the shopping center throughout the term of their leases in accordance with the landlord’s vision.

On August 2, 2024, Illinois amended its Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), curbing the potential for massive damages and modernizing the law’s written consent provisions. On their face, the amendments are not retroactive.  It remains unclear, however, whether this change in Illinois law will nonetheless be applied retroactively by the courts.

Fake reviews and testimonials for services and products have been under the watchful eye of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for decades. With the proliferation of online bots and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, reviews and testimonials have been even easier to fake in recent years. On August 14, 2024, the FTC announced the Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, prohibiting fake reviews and testimonials from being sold or purchased by businesses. Importantly, the Final Rule enables the FTC to seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

In February, we posted about the USPTO’s Inventorship Guidance for AI-assisted Inventions, 89 Fed. Reg. 10043 (Feb. 13, 2024), and how that guidance might affect a retailer in New USPTO AI-Assisted Invention Guidance Will Affect Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies.

The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of BBB National Programs recently announced it completed an investigation into Kidgeni, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) art creator website designed for children. CARU’s determined that Kidgeni is directed to children under 13 and is not in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or CARU’s Privacy Guidelines.

On Friday, August 2, 2024, the United States sued ByteDance, TikTok, and its affiliates for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA Rule”). In its complaint, the Department of Justice alleges TikTok collected, stored, and processed vast amounts of data from millions of child users of its popular social media app.