Walmart taken to court over ‘unauthorised’ hair curlers
A UK hair company has sued Walmart for infringing patent and trademark rights protecting its hair curling brand, Curlformers.
Hair Flair filed the lawsuit at the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York yesterday, October 18, after claiming to have tried unsuccessfully to resolve the issue.
The UK company owns a US patent called “Hair treatment device and method” (number 6,647,989), as well as US trademarks for the word ‘Curlformers’ (4,746,230) and the logo (3,679,861). It began selling the curlers in the US in 2007.
Hair Flair said that, in a series of correspondence with Walmart, it identified third-party sellers of unauthorised and infringing hair curler products on www.walmart.com and asked Walmart to remove all infringing listings directly and block the sellers from selling any such products.
In particular Hair Flair said that when customers search for the Curlformers goods on Walmart’s website, two unauthorised copies are included in the search results.
However, Walmart refused to remove the infringing products and instead required Hair Flair “to address its infringement allegations directly to the parties that allegedly listed the accused products for sale”, the suit claimed.
Hair Flair said that Walmart has been “repeatedly put on notice of its patent-infringing conduct”.
It added that consumers who buy unauthorised and infringing products are often receiving goods that do not meet the company’s high standards for quality and safety.
The UK company has therefore hit Walmart with a number of claims, including patent infringement, wilful trademark infringement, unfair competition and false designation of origin. It is seeking an injunction, corrective advertisement action, and damages tripled for wilful infringement, among other forms of relief.
The lawsuit comes just two months after agricultural technology company Zest Labs accused Walmart of stealing trade secrets relating to technology for reducing food waste. The complaint, filed in August at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, centred on the ‘Zest Fresh’ solution for managing the delivered freshness of produce.
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