Legal Question in Business Law in Massachusetts

Re: no purchase necessary

Federal law and regulations require that a sweepstakes contest (e.g., Publishers Clearinghouse) be open to all members of the public irrespective of whether they are making a purchase. On the other hand, you can target coupons or discount offers to a particular group.

Without knowing what you specifically have in mind (and I must confess absolute ignorance of the McDonalds game that you mentioned), I can't give you specific advice. However, if you have an example like that one to follow, I can tell you that it would be highly unlikely that McDonalds would do it wrong (they would make a great class-action target, and they can afford good lawyers!), so you would be pretty safe taking the same approach.

Best wishes,

LDWG

Re: no purchase necessary

If a person is required to make a purchase or to give you anything else of value in order to have a CHANCE of receiving something of value, then you are conducting a lottery, which is illegal in Massachusetts (with a few exceptions which do not seem to apply to you.) However, if you are giving something of value to every person who meets certain non-random criteria (i.e., each person who has been a customer for six months or each person who spends over $1000 per year) and there is no element of luck involved, you are not conducting a lottery and you are not violating the laws against gambling. McDonalds says "no purchase necessary" because there is, obviously, an element of chance in whether or not you win one of their games.

Re: no purchase necessary

Make a list of your faithful customers, and somehow deliver to their attention a coupon. You can restrict the give-away depending on how you give it away.