The long-running court battle between Pjur Group USA and Megasol Cosmetic GMBH over trademark rights to the name of massage product Eros Bodyglide wages on, with Megasol winning the most recent battle, awarding them, according to the court decree, attorney’s fees and other costs in amounts yet to be determined.
According to the court order dated January 6, 2006, from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Pjur USA’s claim was “frivolous” and “based on numerous false statements from many sources.”
While Megasol is indisputably the original manufacturer of Eros Bodyglide, Pjur Group USA, the U.S. distributor of the product since 1999, contended that they owned trademark rights to the product. On that basis, Pjur Group had requested that the court issue an injunction barring Megasol from importing and selling Eros in the U.S. In December 2003, that request was rejected by the court.
In his recent decision, United States District Judge R. Owen averred that he was “troubled” by the fact that in its complaint, Pjur had neglected to mention two decisions arrived at earlier by European courts, one in Cologne and one in Frankfurt, Germany. The Cologne decision, the judge held, was not favorable to Pjur, while the Frankfurt decision did “not help them.”
In addition, according to the judge, Pjur’s complaint failed to mention the fact that there had been any prior relationship between Pjur and Megasol, “making it seem that out of nowhere a company called Megasol was starting to distribute a product in the United States nearly identical to the plaintiffs’ [Pjur USA].”
Especially glaring was an apparent failure to mention in its filing that in fact Megasol had been manufacturing Eros Bodyglide since 1992, about seven years before Pjur Group was formed.
As a result, the judge ruled that “Attorney’s fees and costs are recoverable against plaintiffs themselves.” In addition, the judge will hold another hearing on March 21-22, 2006, to determine whether Pjur’s “former counsel had or should have had the awareness that the motions lacked legal or factual justification ... and therefore bad faith existed.”
Should the court so find, Pjur’s former attorneys could also be held liable for damages.
Rafi Maman, president of Megasol USA, told Adult Novelty Business, “I’m convinced that during the years that Megasol was enjoined from importing Eros, the product being sold under that name wasn’t of the same quality as Megasol. No one but us has the real formula.”
However, Pjur USA President Richard Harris told ANB, “The decision you just received has no substantive impact on the trademark case. We sued Megasol two years ago and brought a motion to immediately take them off the market. That motion was not successful, and the recent decision merely awards fees to Megasol on that motion.
“In any event,” Harris continued, “we will have an opportunity to appeal the fee award and reserve our right to do so. We have since retained new counsel and look forward to enforcing our rights in EROS in the U.S courts, particularly now that the German courts have weighed in and determined that Pjur group, not Megasol, is the rightful owner of EROS.”
