The Federal Trade Commission, established over 100 years ago, has two enforcement arms: a “competition” bureau that enforces antitrust laws, and a “consumer protection” bureau with authority to prohibit unfair and deceptive practices. Given that they have long been combined in a single dual-mission agency, one might expect these two competencies—antitrust and consumer protection—to be closely interrelated. But traditionally they have not been, and lawyers specializing in the two areas have largely occupied separate and distinct provinces.

Not long after I joined the FTC as deputy director of the Bureau of Competition, an elder statesman among the agency’s staff suggested to me that the “holy grail” would be to find an enforcement action that merged both antitrust and consumer protection principles in a single case. I ended up leading the agency’s effort to bring such a case, a novel monopolization suit that depended on proof that the defendant deceived a standard-setting organization about patents. After leaving the FTC, I veered more deeply into consumer protection law to the point that I became a bit of an oddity—an antitrust lawyer who simultaneously maintained a significant practice doing consumer protection work, including various representations before the FTC on privacy, data security, marketing, and advertising matters, and related litigation.

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