EPC Edgewell Personal Care Company

By Sharon Terlep 

Gillette is suing a razor rival, again.

The largest seller of shavers filed a lawsuit against Edgewell Personal Care Co., maker of Schick brand razors and Edge shave gels, alleging patent infringement and saying its closest competitor made misleading claims against the Procter & Gamble Co. unit.

The civil suit, filed on Tuesday in New York by Gillette, asks the U.S. District Court to force Edgewell to pull newly launched private-label razors from store shelves and remove claims from product packaging that the razors "shave as good or better" than Gillette's Mach 3 blades. The suit focuses on Edgewell's three-bladed razors sold by retailers such as CVS and Wal-Mart.

"When a competitor makes false and misleading claims against one of our products and infringes our patents, it's unfair to consumers, and to our employees and shareholders," Procter & Gamble's chief legal officer said in a statement. The company is also seeking damages.

Edgewell called Gillette's claims baseless, noting that Gillette's Mach 3 patents have expired.

"We are confident in the quality and performance of our private label products," the company said in a statement.

The suit against a smaller rival is Gillette's third since last year and comes as upstart online subscription services chip away at the 120-year-old company's dominance of the $3 billion U.S. market for razors and blades.

Gillette last year sued the biggest of those online services, the Dollar Shave Club, seeking to stop sales of razors it says infringe on one of Gillette's hundreds of patents. The suit is pending. Dollar Shave Club is being acquired by Anglo-Dutch consumer-products company Unilever PLC in a deal announced last month.

Early last year, Gillette sued ShaveLogic Inc. and four former employees who went to work for the Dallas startup, alleging the men breached their contracts with Gillette by sharing trade secrets with their new company.

Representatives for Dollar Shave Club and ShaveLogic declined to comment.

In the 20-page complaint against Edgewell, P&G says its rival must have begun marketing and selling its blades before the Mach 3 patent expired on April 10 because the Edgewell blades were in stores as early June, Gillette says.

"It can take years to bring a product to market," a P&G spokeswoman said. "It is clear from the launch date of Edgewell's private-label product that it was being designed and produced while the patents were still active, making it a patent violation."

Patent law prohibits making, using or importing an invention that is still protected, said patent attorney David Long, formerly a partner at the Washington, D.C., firm Kelley Drye & Warren.

"Gillette is trying to say, 'We don't know what they did, but we have reasonable belief that they must have done something'," Mr. Long said. "The issue is what relief the patent owner can get if they establish infringement and the practical value of that relief."

Meantime, Gillette says internal testing proves the Edgewell blades don't perform as well as the Mach 3, therefore the packaging claims amount to false advertising. The company says it used a software program to measure the number of nicks left behind by each of the razors on a test group of men, and found that the Schick razors left "a statistically significant number of greater nicks and cuts."

Packaging for the Edgewell razors say the blades are compatible with Mach 3 razor handles, according to the lawsuit.

Gillette launched the Mach 3 in 1998 as the first triple-bladed razor with a pivoting-head design to allow for shaving with less pressure, thereby reducing skin irritation. The company, in its suit, says Mach 3 sales have topped $5 billion since the launch, not including replacement cartridges or disposable razors with the same name.

P&G's share of the men's razor and blade businesses in the U.S. fell to 59% last year from 71% in 2010, according to Euromonitor. Edgewell's share has slipped as well in that time to 11% from 13%, though sales of private-label razors, which includes some of Edgewell's, grew to 6% from 3%. Dollar Shave Club, which was founded in 2011, had 5% of the market last year.

P&G's other brands have occasionally turned to the courts to battle competitors. In 2014, the company sued a small toothpaste manufacturer, Hello Products LLC, for saying their toothpaste was 99% natural on its package. P&G also won a patent lawsuit against a private-label competitor to its Crest Whitestrips teeth-whitening product.

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 23, 2016 17:08 ET (21:08 GMT)

Edgewell Personal Care (NYSE:EPC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024

Edgewell Personal Care (NYSE:EPC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024