The unfairness doctrine is a doctrine in United States trade regulation law under which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can declare a business practice "unfair" because it is oppressive or harmful to consumers even though the practice is not an antitrust violation, an incipient antitrust violation, a violation of the "spirit" of the antitrust laws, or a deceptive practice.
The doctrine was first authoritatively recognized in FTC v. Sperry & Hutchinson Trading Stamp Co.,[1] although earlier Supreme Court decisions had suggested it in obiter dicta.
[T]he Federal Trade Commission does not arrogate excessive power to itself if, in measuring a practice against the elusive, but congressionally mandated standard of fairness, it, like a court of equity, considers public values beyond simply those enshrined in the letter or encompassed in the spirit of the antitrust laws.Sperry & Hutchinson, 405 U.S. at 244.
Neither the language nor the history of the Act suggests that Congress intended to confine the forbidden methods to fixed and unyielding categories.
The common law afforded a definition of unfair competition and, before the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Sherman Act had laid its inhibition upon combinations to restrain or monopolize interstate commerce, which the courts had construed to include restraints upon competition in interstate commerce.