The FTC continued its campaign against deceptive health and disease claims with enforcement actions against the marketers of “MelApp” and “Mole Detective,” smartphone apps that claimed to detect melanoma. These enforcement actions follow earlier FTC actions against smartphone apps that claimed to cure acne.

The Commission voted 4-1 to settle deceptive advertising claims against the Mel App defendant and two of the Mole Detective defendants and to litigate against the remaining two Mole Detective defendants.  Commissioner Ohlhausen disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of the melanoma detection claims and thus with the amount of substantiation required.  The settlement agreements require defendants to substantiate future melanoma-related claims with “competent and reliable scientific evidence [that] shall consist of human clinical testing” that meets rigorous scientific standards.  Consistent with her analysis in POM Wonderful, Commissioner Ohlhausen’s dissent made clear that she  would not require such “onerous” substantiation because “substantiation requirements must flow from the claims made by the advertiser” and “[w]ithout extrinsic evidence, I do not have reason to believe that a reasonable consumer would take away the implied claim that using these apps would increase their chances of detecting skin cancer in the early stages as compared to an examination by a dermatologist.”Continue Reading Holy Moly! FTC Says Smartphone Apps Don’t Detect Skin Cancer