The Advertising Law Blog provides commentary and news on developing legal issues in advertising, promotional marketing, Internet, and privacy law. This blog is sponsored by the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions group at Olshan. The practice is geared to servicing the needs of the advertising, promotional marketing, and digital industries with a commitment to providing personal, efficient and effective legal service.
Following significant enforcement of automatic renewal laws in 2025, enrollment and cancellation of continuity programs are expected to remain a top priority for regulators and legislators in 2026. While the Eighth Circuit’s vacating of the FTC’s recent Negative Option Rule brought great headlines, its impact was minimal given the continued legislative actions creating their own laws. For example, California, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut all passed laws enhancing their existing automatic renewal requirements, fostering a hodge podge of compliance ...
As AI increasingly becomes the “plastics” (the famous line in The Graduate) of this era, politicians and regulators are increasingly focused on enforcement of applicable standards while at the same time balancing the advancement of the technology.
On the federal side, on December 11, 2025, President Trump issued the Executive Order “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” that grants the United States Attorney General to sue states of AI regulations that are inconsistent with the Order’s policy goals, including laws that can regulate ...
Despite predictions to the contrary, the first year of the Trump led FTC has been surprising to many observers on its lack of consumer protection enforcement actions. To that end, the state attorneys general have been increasingly active in terms of enforcing their own consumer protection laws, including focusing on the social media channels. In December, a bipartisan coalition of three dozen state attorneys general urged the social media platform operator Meta to enforce its own policies about pharmaceutical and wellness ads on Instagram and Facebook and take additional ...
In August 2025, a federal judge in Philadelphia dismissed claims against a group of food manufacturers (Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mondelez, Kellog, General Mills, etc.) accusing them of engineering ultra-processed foods to be addictive and harmful. In December, however, the City of San Francisco filed an even more comprehensive lawsuit against many of the same companies, seeking to recover financial penalties for the immense healthcare costs to uninsured consumers as well as to end deceptive and child-targeted marketing of foods containing unhealthy additives.
One of the banes of e-commerce websites is lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), claiming that websites are inaccessible to people who are sight-impaired or have other disabilities. The number of ADA e-commerce lawsuits surged in 2025 and all indications are that this will continue into 2026. For websites that offer hundreds of products for sale, it is virtually impossible to ensure that every product link converts seamlessly to screen readers and other specialized apps designed for accessibility to navigate, search, and purchase items online.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, and Mary Grieco, Chair of the Intellectual Property Law Group and Co-Chair of the Brand Management & Protection Group, will speak on the panel “AI and Legal Liability” at Luxury Roundtable's AI in Luxury Summit on January 15, 2026, at 3:15 P.M. in New York.
As AI continues to be used more and more by individuals and organizations, we anticipate an uptick in insurance claims related to AI and its use and implementation. To date, while there are some policies geared towards creators of AI, the insurance industry has not introduced widespread standard form policies addressing AI liabilities. Policyholders facing AI related claims can and should look to traditional coverages to address insurance claims related to AI and AI use.
In 2026, among the major copyright cases to watch is the consolidated case against Midjourney, Inc. pending in the Central District of California brought by Disney, Warner Brothers, and Universal. Midjourney offers an AI tool that generates images based on text prompts and may soon offer video services. The studios allege that Midjourney’s use of the studios’ content to train Midjourney’s AI models infringes their copyrights. Midjourney’s primary defense is that its use of the content is “fair use” under the copyright laws.
As of the end of 2025, 19 states have passed consumer privacy legislation, and 4 more states have active privacy law bills in various stages. In addition, state attorneys general are actively enforcing these laws, having brought and settled over 1200 consumer privacy cases over the last few years, and while the state privacy laws do not allow a private right of action (for the most part), consumers as well as class action attorneys are finding new and novel ways to bring lawsuits against businesses for various privacy violations.
In August 2025, in its continuing efforts to curtail fraudulent trademark filings, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) terminated over 52,000 fraudulent trademark applications that were all filed by one firm alone, issuing sanctions against it. As fraudsters only get more clever, the USPTO is fighting back with modern technology, adding yet another level of verification for trademark filers requiring additional identity verification.
Andrew Lustigman, Chair of Olshan's Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group, was featured in the Financier Worldwide POWER PLAYERS: Advertising & Marketing 2025 - Distinguished Advisers report. The report includes a Q&A with Andy wherein he discusses some of the standout moments in his career, the importance of mentoring younger colleagues and the values that he believes are essential for building strong and trusting relationships with clients.