Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in a Bloomberg BNA email alert titled “New York Taps Away Misleading Health Info for Smartphone Users,” by Gerald B. Silverman.
Following is an excerpt:
Bradley Merrill Thompson, an attorney with Epstein Becker & Green, told Bloomberg BNA, “Yet again we have an agency other than [the Food and Drug Administration] weighing in on what it thinks is misleading advertising.” Thompson is a member of a Bloomberg BNA advisory board.
“Over the last several years, we’ve seen the [Federal Trade Commission] pursue mobile app companies on the basis of unsupported claims in the medical realm,” he said in an email. “Indeed, it has pursued claims that would likely fall under FDA regulation, but the federal government doesn’t have a monopoly on regulating advertising, even for health-related products.”
“Most states have agencies that oversee advertising within their state, even though much of the advertising done is done broadly across the states,” he said. “This means software developers have to think about potentially all 50 states, and whether an enforcer in any state might take offense at their claims.”