Mala McAlpin The lawsuit seeks a halt on current advertising, corrective marketing, damages, and attorney fees.
BTL Industries, Inc. today announced it has filed a lawsuit against Allergan plc, Allergan USA, Inc., Allergan, Inc., and Zeltiq Aesthetics, Inc., alleging false and misleading advertising by Allergan relating to BTL’s EMSCULPT device for non-invasive muscle toning and body shaping.
According to BTL’s lawsuit, Allergan’s marketing materials, and social media contain various deceptive comparisons of Allergan’s CoolTone product against BTL’s EMSCULPT device, claiming CoolTone to have performance advantages over the latter.
“While BTL welcomes fair competition and competitive advertising, it was the egregious and misleading nature of their marketing that compelled us to file this lawsuit,” said Filip Donner, Director of BTL Industries. “Long before bringing their product to the market, Allergan knowingly made false, deceptive, and misleading descriptions of fact concerning the nature, characteristics, and qualities of the EMSCULPT device as compared to their product.”
“In particular, Allergan’s comparisons about magnetic intensity are false on their face. The tests presented in the lawsuit show that Allergan’s product and BTL’s EMSCULPT have on average substantially equivalent magnetic intensity at the point of patient contact. Further, Allergan’s statements about magnetic intensity are misleading when they falsely imply that magnetic intensity is a measure of power, or efficacy,” says Donner.
“Alone, magnetic intensity is not an accurate measure of the amount of induced electrical current delivered to the tissue by the magnetic field during therapy,” explained Ron Borsheim, VP – Business Development. “The higher the induced electrical current, the stronger the muscle contraction.”
BTL have presented testing in the lawsuit that claims BTL’s EMSCULPT device, when averaging abdomen, buttocks and leg therapies, induces up to 56% more electrical current into the target tissue than Allergan’s product.
This is the second lawsuit filed by BTL against Allergan recently in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. The previous lawsuit, filed December last year, asserts that the Cooltone device (manufactured by Zimmer for Allergan) infringes on BTL’s United States patents. Today’s lawsuit aims for a court order that will halt Allergan’s advertising of CoolTone, plus requests for corrective, advertising, damages, and attorney’ fees.
The lawsuit seeks a halt on current advertising, corrective marketing, damages, and attorney fees.
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