Timely final rule that took years to develop that in effect addresses the recent notoriety of marketers threatening lawsuits and defamation against a reviewer who reported negative commentary. (the rule also prohibits fake reviews, purchasing positive/negative reviews, fake testimonials, etc)
FTC just issued a final rule that includes…
Review Suppression: The final rule prohibits a business from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review. The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment.
Any company that threatens litigation over a negative review is shooting themselves in the foot.
Unless someone is outright slandering a company with blatantly false information, litigation is not a very smart approach.
This isn’t really a new phenomenon. Long ago Bose sued Consumer Reports for defamation over a bad review of the original Bose 901 speakers. Bose lost. It went all the way to the US Supreme Court (on a technical question; the case was brought in federal court because Bose and the magazine were “resident” in different states). Consumer Reports “won” but the expense and experience caused them to stop doing that type of review. At least that’s what I recall (increasingly unreliable).
Anyone remember how vicious Monster Cable was about anyone using the word Monster in their company name? They went after everyone, even Monster Vac, which is a duct cleaning company. Even though this wasn’t about negative reviews, the company received enormous backlash for their trivial pursuits.
Yep. I owned a pair of Thiel CS 2 2 (for the next version they went back to decimals, i.e., the CS 2.3). Bose apparently claimed to own the trademark to the number 2.2 in the speaker context (or something like that) and sued Thiel for infringement. Thiel changed the name rather than fight (I expect they would have won–the trademark claim is absurd).
