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Laura Kim

Laura Kim draws upon her experience in senior positions at the Federal Trade Commission to advise clients across industries on complex advertising, privacy, and data security matters. She provides practical compliance advice and represents clients in FTC and State AG investigations. Ms. Kim advises on a wide range of consumer protection issues, including green claims, influencers, native advertising, claim substantiation, Made in USA claims, children's privacy, subscription auto-renewal marketing, and other digital advertising matters. In addition, Ms. Kim actively practices before the NAD, including recent successful resolution of matters for both challengers and advertisers. She co-chairs Covington's Advertising and Consumer Protection Practice Group and participates in the firm's Internet of Things Initiative.

Ms. Kim re-joined Covington after a twelve-year tenure at the FTC, where she served as Assistant Director in two divisions of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, as well as Chief of Staff in the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Attorney Advisor to former Chairman William E. Kovacic. She worked on key FTC Rules and Guides such as the Green Guides, Jewelry Guides, and the Telemarketing Sales Rule. She supervised these and other rule making proceedings and oversaw dozens of the Commission’s investigations and enforcement actions involving compliance with these rules. Ms. Kim also supervised compliance monitoring for companies under federal court or Commission order.

Ms. Kim also served as Deputy Chief Enforcement Officer at the U.S. Department of Education, where she helped establish a new Enforcement Office within Federal Student Aid. In this role, she managed investigations of higher education institutions and oversaw issuance of fines and adverse actions for institutions in violation of federal student aid regulations. Ms. Kim also supervised the borrower defense to repayment division and the Clery campus safety and security division.

On Thursday, March 7, 2024, the U.S. Senate confirmed two nominees for the open seats on the Federal Trade Commission:  Andrew N. Ferguson, former solicitor general of the Commonwealth of Virginia; and Melissa Holyoak, former solicitor general with the Utah Attorney General’s Office.  With this confirmation of two new Republican Commissioners, the FTC is one step closer to a full slate of five bipartisan Commissioners.  The Senate also re-confirmed Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter for a second term.  President Biden had nominated Ferguson and Holyoak on July 11, 2023, and renominated Slaughter on February 13, 2023. Continue Reading FTC Returns to Bipartisan Commission with Confirmation of Two New Republican Commissioners

On June 30, the FTC announced that it had issued a new notice of proposed rulemaking that addresses fake reviews and testimonials.  The rule prohibits practices the Commissioners have identified as problematic in public statements for the past several years.  For instance, when announcing the review of the Endorsement Guides over a year ago, Chair Khan noted that “consumers’ increasing reliance on online reviews can also incentivize advertisers to harness fake reviews, suppress negative reviews, and amplify positive ones.”  The proposed rule covers a variety of topics including fake reviews, review hijacking, purchasing reviews, employee reviews, review suppression, and the use of fake indicators of social media influence.  Several of the new provisions track principles set forth in prior FTC cases, or target specific practices previously identified in the Endorsement Guides.  Below we’ve summarized the requirements in the proposed rule.  The NPRM will be open for public comment for 60 days once it is posted in the federal register.  As of today, it has not yet been posted.Continue Reading FTC Proposes New Rulemaking Focused on Reviews and Testimonials

On March 23, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced a notice of proposed rulemaking that would significantly revise the legal framework governing automatically renewing subscriptions.  The proposal would amend the FTC’s existing Negative Option Rule to provide specific disclosure, consent, and cancellation requirements applicable to all negative options in all media.  The Rule would formalize many of the guidelines from the FTC’s October 2021 Enforcement Policy Statement Regarding Negative Option Marketing (“Policy Statement”) and incorporate new requirements not previously addressed at the federal level such as renewal reminders.  Continue Reading FTC Proposes to Rewrite Negative Option Rule with Expansive Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

On January 13, the FTC announced a settlement with WealthPress, an online service provider that recommends trades in financial markets.  The settlement resolved allegations that WealthPress violated both the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) and Section 5 by making false and misleading claims about how much consumers could earn with the company’s trading recommendation services.  The action is noteworthy for two reasons.  First, building upon the FTC’s prior MoviePass settlement, the FTC’s ROSCA allegations focus not on the terms of the subscription service offered, but rather on the failure to clearly disclose material information about the company’s services.  Second, this is the FTC’s first settlement imposing civil penalties for alleged earnings claims violations predicated upon a Notice of Penalty Offenses issued in October 2021.  The settlement provides for $1.3 million in consumer redress, $500,000 in civil penalties, and injunctive relief.Continue Reading FTC Relies on ROSCA and Notices of Penalty Offenses to Police Deceptive Conduct in Settlement with WealthPress

On December 20, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced its issuance of Health Products Compliance Guidance, which updates and replaces its previous 1998 guidance, Dietary Supplements: An Advertising Guide for Industry.  While the FTC notes that the basic content of the guide is largely left unchanged, this guidance expands the scope of the previous guidance beyond dietary supplements to broadly include claims made about all health-related products, such as foods, over-the-counter drugs, devices, health apps, and diagnostic tests.  This updated guidance emphasizes “key compliance points” drawn from the numerous enforcement actions brought by the FTC since 1998, and discusses associated examples related to topics such as claim interpretation, substantiation, and other advertising issues.Continue Reading FTC Issues New Guidance Regarding Health Products

On November 28, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and seven state attorneys general announced that they reached settlements with Google LLC and iHeartMedia, Inc., to resolve claims that the companies aired deceptive advertisements promoting Google’s Pixel 4 phone by arranging for iHeartMedia radio personalities who never actually used the phone to personally endorse it.  The companies agreed to pay a combined $9.4 million to the states to settle these allegations.Continue Reading Google and iHeartMedia Reach Settlements with FTC and States for Deceptive Endorsements

On November 3, the FTC announced that it entered into a significant $100 million settlement with Vonage to resolve allegations relating to the internet phone service provider’s sales and autorenewal practices. The FTC alleged that Vonage violated both the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) by failing to provide a simple cancellation mechanism, failing to disclose material transaction terms prior to obtaining consumers’ billing information, and charging consumers without consent.Continue Reading FTC Flexes ROSCA Muscle With $100 Million “Dark Patterns” Settlement with Vonage

On December 10th, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a Statement of Regulatory Priorities that announced the agency’s intent to initiate rulemakings on issues such as privacy, security, algorithmic decision-making, and unfair methods of competition.
Continue Reading FTC Announces Regulatory Priorities for Both Privacy and Competition

On February 4, 2021, the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce held a hearing entitled, “Safeguarding American Consumers: Fighting Scams and Fraud During the Pandemic.”  The hearing focused on the FTC’s ability to obtain equitable monetary relief under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act – an issue that is currently being considered by the Supreme Court in AMG Capital Management LLC v. Federal Trade Commission.

To gain a better understanding of the deceptive marketing campaigns seeking to exploit the ongoing public health crisis and the challenges the FTC faces in fighting fraud, the Subcommittee invited Bonnie Patten, Executive Director of TruthInAdvertising.org; Jessica Rich, former Bureau of Consumer Protection Director and Distinguished Fellow of the Institute for Technology Law & Policy at Georgetown Law School; William E. Kovacic, former FTC Chairman and Global Competition Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School; and Traci Ponto, Spokane COPS Crime Victim Advocate at Spokane Community Oriented Policy Services.
Continue Reading Hearing on Consumer Protection During the Pandemic Focuses on FTC’s Equitable Monetary Authority

With a new administration and a new Congress come key leadership changes and new priorities at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  The change in administration paves the way for a Democratic-led Commission, though a permanent FTC Chairman and a successor to Commissioner Chopra (who has been nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) might not be confirmed for several months.  In the meantime, President Biden has appointed sitting Commissioner Slaughter to serve as Acting Chair.
Continue Reading What A New Administration Means for the FTC’s Data Privacy & Security Enforcement Agenda