I really think that false statements made by commercial entities should be prosecuted as fraud. It's one thing to engage in vague sales talk like 'the new SuperTech Blinkenlights will turbocharge your actuarial skydiving research!!', but when you're making claims of having actually existing technology (which you may not be ready or willing to patent, but do want to raise money with), the public has an interest in protecting itself from fraud.

Perhaps there should be some requirement to pay for independent professional witnesses, sort of like observers who validate Guinness world records as having met some (negotiable) standard of existing in the real world while being bound not to comment on the specifics of how it was achieved.