French beauty group L’Oréal plans to appeal against a ruling that it was found liable of patent infringement and divulging trade secrets.
This week, a US jury ruled in favour of indie hair care brand Olaplex after it sued the maker of Garnier and La Roche-Posay for stealing confidential details of its three-step system and launching a rival version.
A spokesperson for L’Oréal USA told Cosmetics Business that the company continued to believe Olaplex’s accusations are unfounded and “they had no basis for a patent infringement claim against us nor did we misuse sensitive business information”.
L’Oréal said that it expects to win the appeal, as it also has ongoing invalidation proceedings before the United States Patent & Trademark Office and the Federal Court of Appeals to invalid the patents referred to in the case.
“Our unique hair bonding technology was developed independently by L’Oréal Research teams, being informed by our more than 100 years of scientific expertise in hair care, together with input from our long standing partnerships with top hair stylists,” the spokesperson continued.
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They claimed L’Oréal is guided by an “unwavering code of ethics”, which respects and invites fair competition: “We believe it drives everyone in the industry to develop better products and services to give our customers the choice they desire and deserve.
“We will never stop innovating and investing in the most cutting-edge research to deliver the highest performing hair care products to our customers.”
Olaplex claimed L'Oréal created three of its own product versions: Matrix Bond Ultim8 Step 1 Amplifier, Redken pH-Bonder #1 Bond Protecting Additive and L’Oréal Professionnel Smartbond Step 1 Additive products.
The awarded damages Olaplex will receive are still being finalised, but the current estimate is around US$91m.
