Products composed of ground leather may not described as "leather" without proper qualifications
70 F.T.C. 1857 · July 20, 1966 · Digest No. 71
source volume section (70 F.T.C. 1857)
Text is machine-OCR of the printed volume and may contain errors. Advisory opinions are the Commission's views on proposed conduct, not binding orders.
No. 71. Products composed of ground leather may not described as "leather" without proper qualifications. In an advisory opinion recently issued by the Commission, it said that a prodnct composed of ground leather may not be described as "leather" without proper qualification. The product in question involved a manicure case, the outer portion of which was composed of 85 %-90 ')0 ground leather combined with latex rubber. In its opinion the Commission said, the use of the word 'leather,' without qualifieation, means top grain leather. " H Since the manicure case is composed of ground leather " the Commission added it would be improper to describe it as leather without proper qualification. " The Commission opinion then pointed out several ways in which this could
be done, such as:
Ground leather (or shredded
leather or pulverized leather)
Composed of ground leather
Contains ground leather
The Commission s opinion further pointed out that, if the requesting party decided not to disclose the ground leather com- ,
position of the case, it would be necessary to disclose that the outer portion is not Jeather by such language as:
Not leather
Imitation leather
Simu1ated leather
The reason for this " the Commission added is that the outer portion of the case has the appearance of leather and in order to remove the potentiaJ deception inherent in its appearance, it is necessary to disclose the fact that the material is not leather. (File No. 663 7057, released July 20, 1966.