FEATURE
CHUBBY GORILLA
BEATS ITS CHEST
FIGHTING BACK AGAINST A TIDE OF
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT
BY GORDON STRIBLING
In February, chewing gum manufacturer Wrigley filed
a lawsuit against a US-based e-liquid company they
accused of trademark infringement. The offending liquids
were called Pink Starburst and Skeetlez. It was the
second such lawsuit filed by the company in a year – the
first being against another e-liquid company for their use
of the names ‘Dbl Mint’ and ‘Joosy Fruit.’
While the vaping industry has cleaned up its image
significantly since the pre-TPD days of ‘bathtub’ e-liquids,
the issue of trademark infringement and intellectual
property theft persists. Unscrupulous companies continue
to profit from respected brand identities developed over
many years and, in some cases, many decades.
Of course, vaping is not the only industry to engage in
IP theft.
Earlier this year, US president Donald Trump decided
to impose tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports
from China in response to the alleged theft of American
intellectual property. And in November 2017, the US
Justice Department indicted three Chinese nationals in
connection with cyber hacks and the alleged theft of the
intellectual property.
Chubby Gorilla’s Charles J. Archa mbeau knows all too
well how intellectual property theft can impact upon a
business. The company is, in his view, victim of the largest
scale IP theft in the entire vaping industry.
“We’ve been around for about three years, and this has
been going on for at least two,” Charles said. “People are
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buying counterfeit bottles of clearly inferior quality and
then we get complaints from customers who are ripped off
by companies thinking it’s us. This has to end.”
The success of Chubby Gorilla’s unicorn bottles has led
some customers and people in the industry to believe that
the name is a generic term for a type of e-liquid bottle. But
that is not the case.
“We want to educate people to be aware that Chubby
Gorilla is both a patent and a brand and not a generic term
for the type of bottles we produce,” Charles said. “We’ve
worked incredibly hard to build this business. We have to
protect the brand.”
Frustrated with inferior copies flooding the market, the
Chubby Gorilla team have started taking matters into their
own hands.
At IECIE in Shenzhen in April, several companies were
forced to shut down their booths as solicitors moved in to
seize counterfeit Chubby Gorilla products. The dramatic
scenes were captured on video as a warning to others.
On this, Charles said, “We’re not looking to be bullies.
It’s about education. Everyone in the industry needs to
be responsible and honest towards their customers. We
make our products using virgin plastic and the highest
quality components. Rip-off companies use recycled
plastic. These practices give the industry a bad name.”
This kind of behaviour reflects badly on an industry that