In 2019, 1-800 Contacts acquired 6over6, which is a digital healthcare technology that enables consumers to perform their own vision tests from anywhere using a computer or smartphone.

[14] In December 2003, Judge Deborah Batts of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction, barring WhenU from delivering the advertisements to some web surfers, on the grounds that it constituted trademark infringement violating the Lanham Act.

[18] The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the case, stating that it was "not to help [people] fight off adware and spyware" but was rather intended to allow companies "to gain control over [a computer's] desktop", where the legal principles being employed "would create a precedent that would enable trademark owners to dictate what could be open on your desktop when you visit their websites".

[19] In addition to the WhenU case, 1-800 Contacts has been involved in other trademark infringement suits revolving around the issue of keyword advertising.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

In a blog post, the EFF accused 1-800 Contacts of "leveraging the massive expense of patent litigation to squelch the competition"[24] and asked its followers to help DITTO by crowdsourcing prior art.

On August 8, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint charging that 1-800 Contacts, the largest online retailer of contact lenses in the United States, unlawfully orchestrated a web of anti-competitive agreements with rival online contact lens sellers that suppress competition in certain online search advertising auctions and that restrict truthful and non-misleading internet advertising to consumers.

According to the administrative complaint, 1-800 Contacts entered into bidding agreements with at least 14 competing online contact lens retailers that eliminate competition in auctions to place advertisements on the search results page generated by online search engines such as Google and Bing.