Keurig faces lawsuit over coffee and tea pods
By Canadian Packaging Staff
General Bagging/Weighing Club Coffee LP K-Cup coffee pods Keurig Green Mountain Inc. single-serve coffee legal battleSingle-serve coffee giant facing $600-million lawsuit from Canada's Club Coffee regarding unfair falsehoods about competitor products.
The competitive world of coffee just got a little bit more nasty as the Mississauga-based Club Coffee LP has filed a lawsuit against the Vermont-based Keurig Green Mountain Inc., the purveyors of the Keurig coffee delivery system and the K-Cup coffee pods.
The $600-million lawsuit filed in Ontario alleges that Keurig is misrepresenting the exclusivity of its products with consumers and retailers, such as with the newly released Keurig 2.0 coffee system—stating that the new technology is incompatible with competitors pods.
Other allegations from Club Coffee include Keurig forcing retailers to sign exclusive agreements to purchase just their products to create a monopoly and to drive up K-Cup pod prices.
The allegations have not yet been proven in court.
Back in 2012, Keurig lost its patent on the single-serve coffee cups. In 2014 the company still holds a 90 per cent North American market share of the coffee-pod segment. It garnered $4.4 billion in sales in 2013.
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