Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A lit­tle over a year af­ter it was blocked from sell­ing or mar­ket­ing a range of spe­cial­ist skin care prod­ucts, Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Lim­it­ed has en­tered in­to a deal to be­come the ex­clu­sive lo­cal au­tho­rised com­mer­cial re­tail­er.

In April, last year, der­ma­tol­o­gist Dr Rachel Eck­el, her com­pa­ny the Skin Health In­sti­tute (SHI), and Bar­ba­dos-based Der­med­ica Med­ical Lim­it­ed ob­tained an in­junc­tion against the ma­jor lo­cal cos­met­ics re­tail­er af­ter it be­gan mar­ket­ing and sell­ing prod­ucts pro­duced by Cal­i­for­nia-based ZO Skin Health In­cor­po­rat­ed.

In a state­ment is­sued on Mon­day, Pen­ny­wise an­nounced that it had set­tled the le­gal dis­pute while it was await­ing ju­di­cial de­ter­mi­na­tion.

“Af­ter months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, through our lawyers, we have been able to achieve a com­pro­mise to the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of both par­ties in the court mat­ter,” it said.

It al­so sought to ex­plain how the dis­pute arose.

“At all times, in the said court mat­ter, our con­stant po­si­tion was that we had legal­ly im­port­ed gen­uine, au­then­tic prod­ucts and had of­fered it to our cus­tomers at the best pos­si­ble prices, in keep­ing with our stan­dard prac­tice and our con­tin­u­ous com­mit­ment to our cus­tomers,” it said.

“We wish to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank our loy­al cus­tomers for their faith in us and their con­tin­ued sup­port over this pe­ri­od,” it added.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, Dr Eck­el claimed that she be­gan treat­ing her pa­tients at the in­sti­tute with the prod­ucts, in­vent­ed by renowned Unit­ed States (US) der­ma­tol­o­gist Dr Zein Oba­gi, in 2016.

Re­fer­ring to a sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ment from May 2019, un­der which Der­med­ica was giv­en the ex­clu­sive right to mar­ket and sell the prod­ucts re­gion­al­ly, Dr Eck­el and the com­pa­nies point­ed out that “med­ical grade” prod­ucts are meant to on­ly be sold af­ter be­ing pre­scribed by a physi­cian.

Dr Eck­el and SHI claimed that the prod­ucts were on­ly sold to their pa­tients af­ter a thor­ough con­sul­ta­tion process to en­sure pa­tient safe­ty.

She and the com­pa­nies filed a law­suit and sought the in­junc­tion af­ter they dis­cov­ered Pen­ny­wise was al­leged­ly sell­ing the prod­ucts over-the-counter at its ten lo­ca­tions across Trinidad in Au­gust 2023.

They not­ed that the prod­ucts were not pur­chased from Der­med­ica or the US man­u­fac­tur­er.

They claimed that they sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives to dis­creet­ly en­quire about the prod­ucts and were re­port­ed­ly told that Pen­ny­wise had a li­cence to dis­trib­ute. They al­so claimed that Pen­ny­wise staff re­ferred to Dr Eck­el and SHI while mar­ket­ing the prod­ucts.

They al­so claimed that they found signs af­fixed to the re­tail­er’s stores in­di­cat­ing that the prod­ucts were “ex­clu­sive” to it.

They al­so ques­tioned the au­then­tic­i­ty of the prod­ucts based on dif­fer­ences in pack­ag­ing and in­con­sis­ten­cies in tex­ture and colour.

In the law­suit, Dr Eck­el and the com­pa­nies are claim­ing that Pen­ny­wise’s con­duct breached the pro­vi­sions of the Pro­tec­tion Against Un­fair Com­pe­ti­tion Act and caused dam­age to the brand’s rep­u­ta­tion.

Dr Eck­el and the two com­pa­nies were rep­re­sent­ed by Ter­rence Bharath, SC, Shiv Shar­ma, and Daniel­la Bharath. Pen­ny­wise was rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, Vivek Lakhan-Joseph, and Taruna Man­groo.