Juul Labs hires former Apple employee to lead the fight against counterfeits
Juul Labs, the e-cig company under flaming for its product’s notoriety with young person, has brought on a new VP of Intellectual Property Protection with Adrian Punderson, formerly of PwC and Apple.
Punderson’s job is all about wreaking alongside government agencies, as well as Juul Labs Intellectual Property VP Wayne Sobon, to combat the sale of bogu and infringing makes. These can stray from copycat vapes and cod that really sold as Juul concoctions all the way to commodities that are designed specifically to be Juul compatible without squandering the trademark.
These fraudulent and infringing produces constitute a significant threat to the company. Of direction , no business misses its produces contravened or its market share stolen.
With Juul, however, it’s far more complicated. Juul Labs is currently under heavy FDA scrutiny over the popularity of its makes with minors.
” As you start to enforce generally on the sale of these types of makes to youth, oftentimes they are going to look for another seller or rationing top of this product ,” said Punderson.” The challenge is that oftentimes they’re going to platforms or places for this and you have no idea what the cause of the product is. A pile of it is copy. So they get something they believe is Juul simply to find out they have a forgery design or cod .”
He says that, for Juul, a identified priority is relating counterfeit marketers and quickly putting that info into the paws of law enforcement. To the extent that they can’t taken any steps, said Punderson, Juul will take civil action.
Part of the concern is that there is zero transparency into what ingredients are included in infringing concoctions, whereas Juul’s recipe at least satisfies the legal requirements for revealing as it strives full FDA approval.
Juul doesn’t currently have data around the scale of conflicting makes on the market, but counterfeit Juul commodities may inaccurately increase marketings illustrations, intensifying scrutiny from the FDA.
Juul has already taken action at law against many impinging both manufacturers and distributors, but Punderson aims to take Juul’s acts against infringing commodities to a new level.
He understands the issue as threefold: Juul Labs must work to stop these makes from being manufactured in the first place, ensure they aren’t allowed across frontiers into the country and taken any steps against retailers who exchange contravening makes and remove them from the market.
” This isn’t a problem where “theres only” a yield difficulty but there isn’t really a dissemination or uptake problem ,” said Punderson.” We don’t have the comfort of looking at the problem singly-faceted. From a global perspective, we want to stop the production and distribution of conflicting makes around the world, and we’ll work closely with government agencies attempting to stop illicit deployment of goods .”
Punderson previously helped as managing board of IP Protection at PriceWaterhouse Coopers, VP of Global Anti-Counterfeiting/ Anti-Diversion at Oakley and succeeded at Apple on the Intellectual Property Enforcement team.
Juul is currently perceived by numerous as a Facebook-ified, 2018 account of Marlboro. Notably, Juul Labs recently closed a $12.8 billion asset from Altria Group, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes. When asked why he chose to work for Juul, Punderson said his initial reaction was no. But after he did some research around the mission of the company, and thought of his own personal experience losing his father to emphysema, he came around quickly.
” I would do anything to get two or three more years with my dad, who was a lifelong smoker ,” said Punderson. “[…] We’re trying to do good things now, move parties away from tobacco and give them alternative methods. To me, it’s a helpful , noble cause that’s worth being involved in and I’m proud to be here .”
It remains to be seen just how large-hearted of such issues infringing products are for Juul and other above-board e-cig makes, but Juul is ramping up its efforts to combat copycats from coming into the mitts of consumers.
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