It’s not a question of he or she with the most toys at the end of the day wins. It’s about he or she selling sex toys they don't have the patent to.
Fully supporting our position on and emphasizing the validity of the patents of the products carried at our shop, a German court just confirmed that products from sex toy shop LELOi AB and LELO Europe GmbH infringed on the patents of the EIS GmbH company.
The Düsseldorf District Court ruled that LELO’s “Sona,” “Sila,” and “Enigma” infringe on the patents of the EIS GmbH company. These patents are primarily utilized in EIS’s “Satisfyer” pressure wave vibrators, and as a result of the current ruling, LELO will cease distributing the above three products within Düsseldorf District Court jurisdiction. Furthermore, LELO will provide EIS information about all distributed products bearing those patents and who bought them.
LELO is also charged with paying damages for distributing the patent-infringed products.
Back in October of last year, the European Patent Office rejected opposition filed by LELO Europe GmbH against the patent. LELOi AB is presently undergoing legal proceedings pending in Sweden, Australia, and Canada, to name but a few places.
LELO has appealed both the decision of the European Patent Office and the Düsseldorf District Court.
With an unprecedented predicted growth from the middle of the last decade to the beginning of the next, the global retail market soon to be approaching a 50 million dollar mark; ever safer materials being used in adult sex aids and sex toy construction; power supply and power sources more easily accessed; the increasing ease (convenience and anonymity leading the way here) of web-shopping, and the lessening of stigma through the years from mainstream media champions like Dr. Ruth to sex toy adds in magazines and appearance on TV shows, vibrators, Ben Wa balls, strap-ons and all manner of fun bed-play items are a well-recognized, popular part of the current world culture. And with this modern popularity, when well-known companies engender legal hassles, the cases are quite visible to the public at large.
Beyond fines that need to be paid and any documents that need to be surrendered from a potential guilty party to the one victimized, loss of reputation has to be the more impactful worry in cases of this particular hand-in-the-cookie-jar thieving. With the wide range of buying choices presently available to a horny global public (or just people looking to find out what all the talk about anal beads is about), it takes nothing for customers to shop someplace else if their confidence in a seller is shaken even slightly.
