Keurig facing a $530m lawsuit in Canada

It may be Friday, the last day of the working week, but we imagine that the mood over at Keurig could be slightly lower than normal today.

News reports have emerged that say that a Toronto-based company is attempted to saddle the single-serve lynchpins with a $530 million ($600 million Canadian) lawsuit.

Club Coffee alleges that Keurig Green Mount Inc. is using a multitude of anti-competitive tactics that mislead both retailers and consumers in a big to maintain their status in the competitive sector.

This isn’t the first time that Keurig has been taken to task like this, though successful convictions have not been forthcoming in the United States.

In the documents, filed at Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, asserts that Keurig has been violating Canada’s laws which govern competition and fair advertisings.

Lawyer Robert Russell, who is representing the Canadian coffee company, noted that Keurig has been gaining sales by preying on a prevalent ‘anxiety’ which is the result of aggressive, potentially illegal, tactics.

The papers claim that Keurig has been blocking some businesses from even stocking third-party K-Cups.

“Some Canadian retailers were told they couldn’t even talk to Club Coffee,” Mr Russell told the local press.

The recent release of Keurig’s second generation brewing machine has only exasperated the situation, apparently.

The 2.0 brewer features a layer of digital protection which, in theory, ensures that the machine can only operate with officially licensed products.

However this technology has already been cracked by users and, as John Piggott, Club Coffee’s chief executive officer, rival companies.

Mr Piggott announced that he decided to take this legal action over two events which took place earlier this year.

Initially Piggott’s company was told by a mainstream retailer in the United States that it had reached an exclusive agreement with Keurig, and would no longer be stocking Club Coffee’s products.

Shortly afterwards they were turned away by a Canadian firm who said that they had an agreement with Keurig which prevented them talking to anybody else.

As noted previously in this piece, this isn’t the first anti-competition themed lawsuit aimed at Keurig.