The popular lighter manufacturer, Zippo Manufacturing Incorporated is suing Blu e-cigarettes under tobacco giant Lorillard Inc. The name ‘Blu’ currently used to market and sell their electronic cigarette. Zippo is internationally known for their flame lighters, and had trademarked BLU® to market butane-based lighters because of the blue colored flame produced by the butane.
Blu cigs started around 2009 was purchased by Lorillard back in 2012 for around $139 million. As soon as they made the new acquisition, they pushed hard to market the product fast and aggressively by quickly boosting distribution and being the most available choice on store shelves nationwide. Lollilard quickly took the lead in national market share, which was not well acclaimed by critics, who complained that Blu was a mediocre product among smaller competing e-cigarette makers with relatively tiny marketing budgets.
Zippo had already a trademark on the name back in 2007, approximately full two years before Blu cigs hit the market. Zippo announced having attempted to resolve the matter amicably had failed and resulted in taking legal action in court. Zippo seems to be set with their wishes to stop Lorillard from using the name Blu a part of the e-cigs name and it might be a bit bad news for the tobacco giant.
However, Lollilard has deep pockets and expensive lawyers who will work hard at getting the case to rule in their favor. They had already filed a complaint against Zippo, for not taking legal action much earlier, if they we’re really concerned about protecting the name. This is a setback for Zippo, considering the brand had been around for almost 5 years.
Because of how heavily Blu cigs has already set foot in the market and the fact that legal action came so late and considering how big Lollilard really is, they will most likely come out of the affair unscathed, but many anti-tobacco critics who desire not to see tobacco backed electronic cigarette brands, certainly get a smile from it.
Along with Lollilard, many other tobacco companies followed by creating their own brands of e-cigarettes themselves and have all taken a rather large stake in the U.S. – being the obvious thing to do, after sales of e-cigs sky rocketed in a short amount of time. Many worry that these companies have ulterior motives to keep tobacco sales healthy and may also push for regulators to go against vaping altogether. Stay tuned as we will cover more on tobacco brands setting foot in the vaping world and putting their product to the test in upcoming articles.