To amend section 1345.01 of the Revised Code to expand the Consumer Sales Practices Act to cover transactions between two businesses.

Section 1. That section 1345.01 of the Revised Code be amended to read as follows:

Sec. 1345.01.  As used in sections 1345.01 to 1345.13 of the Revised Code:

(A) "Consumer transaction" means a sale, lease, assignment, award by chance, or other transfer of an item of goods, a service, a franchise, or an intangible, to an individual for purposes that are primarily personal, family, or household, or solicitation to supply any of these things. A consumer transaction also includes business transactions between persons for goods or services not for resale in the ordinary course of a person's trade or business but for the use or benefit of a person's business or in connection with the operation of a person's business. "Consumer transaction" does not include transactions between persons, defined in sections section 4905.03 and 5725.01 divisions (A), (C), (D), and (E) of section 5725.01 of the Revised Code, and their customers; transactions between certified public accountants or public accountants and their clients; transactions between attorneys, physicians, or dentists and their clients or patients; and transactions between veterinarians and their patients that pertain to medical treatment but not ancillary services.

(B) "Person" includes an individual, corporation, government, governmental subdivision or agency, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, association, cooperative, or other legal entity.

(C) "Supplier" means a seller, lessor, assignor, franchisor, or other person engaged in the business of effecting or soliciting consumer transactions, whether or not the person deals directly with the consumer.

(D) "Consumer" means a person who engages in a consumer transaction with a supplier.

(E) "Knowledge" means actual awareness, but such actual awareness may be inferred where objective manifestations indicate that the individual involved acted with such awareness.

(F) "Natural gas service" means the sale of natural gas, exclusive of any distribution or ancillary service.

(G) "Public telecommunications service" means the transmission by electromagnetic or other means, other than by a telephone company as defined in section 4927.01 of the Revised Code, of signs, signals, writings, images, sounds, messages, or data originating in this state regardless of actual call routing. "Public telecommunications service" excludes a system, including its construction, maintenance, or operation, for the provision of telecommunications service, or any portion of such service, by any entity for the sole and exclusive use of that entity, its parent, a subsidiary, or an affiliated entity, and not for resale, directly or indirectly; the provision of terminal equipment used to originate telecommunications service; broadcast transmission by radio, television, or satellite broadcast stations regulated by the federal government; or cable television service.

Section 2. That existing section 1345.01 of the Revised Code is hereby repealed.