From advocacy to compliance and litigation, Venable's national team protects your beauty and wellness brands and products throughout their full life cycle, from concept to the customer's hands.
Venable's Beauty and Wellness team comprises lawyers across the firm whose combined knowledge of regulatory, intellectual property, and business laws ensures that the needs of clients in this highly regulated and competitive space are met. Additionally, our litigation lawyers are ready to help as needed to protect clients' intellectual property, defend against marketing and advertising claims, and represent clients in class actions and in product liability and mass torts litigation.
With experience serving as in-house counsel for prominent fashion and beauty companies, our attorneys have an intimate understanding of industry self-regulatory bodies and close ties to federal and state regulatory agencies. Clients ranging from startups to the market's biggest players and most recognizable brands rely on our counsel and legal representation to keep their operations running smoothly and their business thriving.
Regulatory Compliance
In today's continuously shifting regulatory landscape, our clients face challenges from many directions. We help them remain compliant with federal and state regulations enforced by such agencies as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Our attorneys also have a strong focus on the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MOCRA) and state regulations like California's Proposition 65 that regulate the ingredients that can be used in cosmetics.
We counsel on regulatory strategy and approval, product formulation, labeling, good manufacturing practices, claim substantiation, and additional matters across all FDA product centers. In addition, our team helps clients navigate the most complex environmental and natural resource challenges and opportunities. We cover every aspect of environmental law, including the storage, handling, and disposal of solid and hazardous wastes and chemical substances (with a focus on PFAS) and addressing regulations regarding air emissions and water discharges.
Advertising and Marketing
Venable has an enviable number of attorneys focused specifically on advertising and marketing law. Members of our team have held senior positions in the advertising industry or with the agencies that regulate the clients they now advise. We counsel on everything from giveaways and sweepstakes to autorenewal laws and subscription models, misleading marketing and false advertising claims, social media influencers, and celebrity endorsements, including rights of publicity and name, image, and likeness (NIL) issues.
With a deep understanding of clients' products and service offerings and decades of experience in the courtroom, we can litigate advertising cases in any forum. We regularly represent clients that produce and market products or services in the cosmetics, fashion and apparel, medical device, and dietary supplement spaces. Our successes range from precedent-setting Supreme Court victories to self-regulatory matters at the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau and countless wins against false advertising claims.
Consumer and Advertising Class Actions
Venable has distinguished itself as a leader in the defense of consumer and advertising class action matters, defending numerous cases in the last few years. We routinely succeed in getting putative class claims dismissed on motion and have had significant success defeating class certification in federal courts across the country.
We are particularly experienced in defending manufacturers of consumer goods in regulated industries, leveraging our deep knowledge of class action procedure and our far-reaching experience litigating consumer protection laws. Our team also regularly defends against claims of deceptive pricing, autorenewal terms, unlawful marketing, and automated calls and texts.
Intellectual Property
With a depth that is hard to find at many full-service firms, our intellectual property (IP) professionals help maximize and protect the value of intellectual portfolios in the beauty and personal care space. Venable provides comprehensive protection and enforcement across every facet of IP law, helping clients acquire, safeguard, and monetize their patents, trademarks, and copyrights while combating counterfeits, dupes, and other infringements to preserve the integrity of their brands worldwide.
Our team covers virtually every facet of IP law, from the acquisition and protection of trademarks and copyrights to IP transactions and global brand protection. Our attorneys are particularly experienced in protecting clients in the consumer space from counterfeiters, impersonators, and infringers, so their brands and iconic looks remain protected.
We have prepared and prosecuted tens of thousands of patents for U.S. and international clients. We regularly advise brands whose portfolios total in the tens of millions of dollars. In IP audits, we uncover hidden assets, evaluate new technologies, survey the competition for possible infringements and dupes, and assess the patents of potential acquisitions.
Clients count on us to balance our strategic counseling with aggressive and efficient litigation around the world. As one of the largest IP litigation groups in the nation, we have successfully represented innovators, patent holders, and brand owners in federal courts, before the International Trade Commission (ITC), in administrative proceedings, and in arbitration and mediation across the country.
Deeply entrenched in client needs and priorities, we routinely protect their brands and trademarks through internet takedowns, preliminary injunctions, ex parte emergency relief against sellers of counterfeit goods, temporary restraining orders (TROs), and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) representation, among other proven methods and strategies.
Privacy and Data Security
If you sell products online or use in-store data-capturing technology, you need to fully understand the legal requirements for protecting customers of all ages. Should your clientele include young teens or adolescent influencers, then extra precautions must be taken to remain compliant with all federal and state privacy laws. Our attorneys help clients build dynamic privacy programs to strengthen their brands and deepen customer trust.
Product Liability and Mass Torts
Venable has one of the most active product liability and mass torts practices in the country, and our attorneys have won verdicts in the toughest jurisdictions around the world. We have served as lead counsel for manufacturers in federal multidistrict litigations (MDLs) and statewide coordinated proceedings in more than a dozen jurisdictions. We have also assisted clients in responding to congressional investigations and in defending against mass tort claims abroad.
When clients face government investigations and/or product recalls, we are ready to provide crisis response management from start to finish. Our attorneys employ coordinated strategies at the front end to minimize our clients' risk, advising on all aspects of conducting a product recall, insurance coverage, public relations, engagement of consulting experts, and management of commercial relationships.
International Trade
We help develop and execute strategies that enable clients to expand their businesses across borders. This often involves many moving parts—strategic sourcing, sales and distribution arrangements, compliance with export controls and tariffs, and the use of foreign agents and affiliated offices. Our well-established relationships with knowledgeable trade counsel abroad provide clients with the skills and experience needed to resolve problems related to maintaining worldwide supply chains and distribution networks.
We cover the entire importing process—entry procedures, tariff classification, duty preference programs, country-of-origin marking and labeling, and more. Our team has a well-established relationship with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and importers call on us to represent them in CBP audits dealing with detentions, forfeitures, seizures, and other actions. We also advise on all aspects of exporting items from the United States, as well as on "deemed exports" within the country. Additionally, we provide pre-audit import and export compliance assessments, including developing corporate-wide, multi-location assessments and tailored training programs.
Mergers and Acquisitions and Other Corporate Matters
Venable's business-savvy dealmakers guide clients through complex transactions from initial term sheet through post-merger integration. From early-stage enterprises to multinational corporations, we represent clients in the fashion, cosmetics, personal care, and wellness industries in connection with their acquisition programs and roll-up strategies, joint ventures, carve-outs, spin-offs, private equity-backed and venture capital-backed deals, and family-owned and founder-owned exit transactions. We also provide guidance on a full range of related matters, including financing and structuring mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals, general corporate counseling, and corporate governance.
Labor and Employment
Our highly experienced labor and employment attorneys advise on the full range of issues that employers face in the beauty, fashion, consumer goods and services, and manufacturing industries. We are experienced in managing all types of employment agreements, including non-compete clauses, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and contracts related to rights of publicity.
Our attorneys additionally investigate allegations of harassment, discrimination, occupational health and safety violations, and human rights abuses, and we counsel employers on compliance with all applicable laws to minimize the risk of such allegations up front. We also offer tailored training programs on anti-harassment policies and workplace behavior training, as well as the use of social media and other platforms for communicating with your workforce and clients.
