A catalog moves the disclosure

Two sections of the guides carry the same standing sentence

The disclosures are applicable to sellers at every level of trade and may be made at the point of sale prior to sale, except where a product can be purchased without personally viewing the product.

And the exception names three ways that happens

Direct mail catalogs, online services, and televised shopping programs. In those cases disclosure should be made in the solicitation for, or description of, the product.

So the duty relocates when the physical encounter disappears

A disclosure that could have been made at a counter has to be made in the copy instead, because there is no counter and no moment at which the buyer holds the object.

Which is the structural opposite of a rule this library has already found

The care labeling rule anticipates that a package hides the required label and orders the care information onto the outside of the package. There the object is present and obstructed.

Here the object is absent altogether

Two rules, two ways a buyer can fail to see something, and two different relocations of the same duty. One prints on the package. The other prints in the description.

And that is a direct observation about a catalog like this one

A description is where the disclosure lives when nothing can be examined. Which is why every page in this library states the source of each figure and the date it was measured, rather than presenting a number as a standing fact.

Every level of trade is the other half of the sentence

Not only the retailer. A wholesaler, an importer and a manufacturer are all sellers at a level of trade, so the disclosure duty runs the whole length of the chain rather than resting at the end of it.

Which is a pattern several spines in this library share

The composite wood standards follow a panel into a component part and into a finished good. The Lacey Act reaches an importer, a transporter and a purchaser alike. A duty that stops at one level is the exception rather than the rule.

One further section defines a term this group uses constantly

A varietal name is given for a division of gem species or genus based on a color, type of optical phenomenon, or other distinguishing characteristic of appearance.

Which puts appearance at the center of the vocabulary

A varietal name is a name for how something looks. And since this whole group is judged by eye, the containers section measures the one thing that decides whether it can be: whether light gets through.

References