At the request of the FTC and the State of Florida, last week, the Southern District Court of Florida temporarily shut down two major telemarketing operations.

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) filed a limited objection in bankruptcy court to the proposed sale of assets of ConnectEdu, Inc. (“ConnectEdu”) on the grounds that the company’s privacy policy protecting customer personal information had potentially not been complied with.

The staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection recently sent a letter to the court handling ConnectEdu’s bankruptcy proceedings and sale of assets, which may include their customer’s personal information.

On May 23, 2014, the Federal Trade Commission announced that the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection sent a letter to the court overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings for ConnectEDU Inc. (“ConnectEDU”), an education technology company, warning that the proposed sale of the company’s assets raises privacy concerns.

On 10 April 2014, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a joint policy statement on the antitrust implications of sharing cybersecurity information to help facilitate the flow of cyberintelligence throughout the private sector. The statement addresses the long-standing concern that sharing cyberintelligence may violate antitrust law under certain circumstances and explains the analytical framework for such arrangements to make it clear that legitimate cyberintelligence exchanges will not raise antitrust issues.

Key Points

During an American Bar Association (ABA) program on antitrust and health care issues on October 1, 2012, U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Deputy Director for Health Care and Antitrust, Leemore Dafny, said that the FTC will focus on how patients purportedly react to price increases, as measured by "diversion ratios," when deciding which hospital mergers to investigate further for potential anticompetitive effects. 

And now for the question:

Q: Could my privacy policy hinder the liquidation of my company's assets?

The head of the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) Consumer Protection Bureau, David Vladeck, recently questioned the planned sale of email addresses and other information for about 48 million consumers by Borders Group, Inc. (“Borders”) as part of that entity’s bankruptcy proceeding.3 In a public letter, Mr. Vladeck noted that the data held by Borders included records of merchandise purchased (video and books) that could be perceived as personal by many customers.

Borders has long collected personal information from customers and promised that such information would not be disclosed without consent. In light of that and Borders' current bankruptcy proceedings, the FTC has sent a letter to the consumer privacy ombudsman overseeing the Borders bankruptcy that seeks the protection of customer personal information.