Juul has a fit of the vapers as rivals create copycat e-cigarettes
Juul is helping crackdown on youth vaping but says rival products sold without age restriction
London — Juul Labs, the e-cigarette maker at the heart of a US crackdown on youth vaping, has filed patent infringement complaints in the US and Europe against what it said were copycat rivals. The complaints follow the seizure this week by US health regulators of more than 1,000 pages of documents from Juul Labs about its sales and marketing practices, as they investigate growing e-cigarette use among young people that threatens to create a new generation of nicotine addicts. Juul, which controls nearly three quarters of the US e-cigarette market, said on Thursday that it filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission alleging that more than 15 entities, most of them based in the US and China, develop and sell products based on its patented technology. The company said its UK subsidiary also filed a complaint in Britain against French company J Well France, alleging that its BŌ line of e-cigarettes infringed its UK patents. J Well France did not immediately respond to...
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