Tempur Sealy International Inc. escalated a legal battle with former customer Mattress Firm Inc., filing a lawsuit accusing the retail chain of selling copycat products without authorization.
The complaint, filed Tuesday in a Tampa, Fla., federal court, accused Mattress Firm of selling mattress and bedding products in the Tampa area that are “strikingly similar” in their appearance and their advertisements to Tempur Sealy’s TPX, +0.51% trademarked Tempur-Pedic brand.
Richard Anderson, the president of Tempur Sealy’s North American operations, said in a sworn declaration that Mattress Firm appeared to be testing a confusingly similar Therapedic brand in the Tampa market and online for the critical Labor Day sales weekend.
Read: Mattress Firm hires Guggenheim to negotiate its debt restructuring
He said market watchers expect Mattress Firm to file for bankruptcy after Labor Day and suggested that illegal sales will be harder to stop if the retailer is put under chapter 11 protection. But U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington refused on Wednesday to issue a restraining order against Mattress Firm ahead of the holiday weekend, saying she wasn’t convinced it had received proper notice of the lawsuit.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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