The Fair Trade Commission said Friday it has ordered eyeglass manufacturer Hoya Corp. to stop making misleading claims about its products.
Between May 1996 and last November, Hoya claimed some of its eyeglasses with plastic lenses were processed with a special coating called siplus to strengthen them.
At least 36,000 lenses sold to 18,000 people did not, however, undergo the complete coating process, the FTC said.
Hoya did without some of the coating processes at its four factories and shipped the lenses to eyeglass retailers to meet delivery deadlines, the regulatory agency said.
Plastic lenses with the coating can be several times stronger than ordinary lenses, according to Hoya.
The FTC ordered Hoya to apologize to consumers through the media or through other means.
Hoya, based in Tokyo, is capitalized at about 6.2 billion yen. It has a roughly 40 percent share of the domestic market for eyeglass lenses, which is worth 210 billion yen on a shipment basis.