State Sham?

USPA NEWS - The United States Department of Homeland Security and Special Agents from the Kansas Attorney General´s Office allowed Procter and Gamble Corporate Executives to conduct a search and seizure at a Baldwin City, Kansas small business owner´s personal home.

In a recent push by Procter and Gamble to recover lost profits due to counterfeit soap operations the company has begun a campaign that is leaving legitimate small business owners such as Brian Glenn of Baldwin City and his company Clean Start Soap Sales left behind in a wake of destruction and borderline financial ruin. ABC Primetime as well as Good Morning America has both aired specials shedding light on a somewhat obscure trend of counterfeit soap manufacturing and sales under Procter and Gamble trademarked brand names.

Upon viewing Brian Glenn´s “Clean Start Soap Sales“ item inventory list the term “Tide Type“ is printed next to each individual product. Brian´s detergent comes in 5 gallon buckets with labeling both on the buckets and sample bottles displaying no artwork, wording or phrasing in any way resembling Tide or claiming to be Tide or any version of the trademarked brand. Mr. Glenn´s company´s labels are not even produced or applied by him or his company. They are produced and applied by the company that manufactures the detergent he is merely a distributor of.

Why then, you may ask, is this even being pursued? During the May raid on Mr. Glenn´s home an agent from the AG office answered that question quite openly stating, “Even if your product and marketing is legitimate this would still be happening because P&G is losing money.“ When asked by Defense Attorney Cooper Overstreet “Is it usual protocol to have the “victim“ (P&G) present at the time a search warrant is issued?“ Special Agent Randy Slater´s response was “Almost never“.

P&G sent Lynne Miller, Senior Executive of Brand Protection to Mr. Glenn´s home from Corporate Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio to assist in directing the AG officers at the time of the raid. Upon questioning during the hearing Wednesday Ms. Miller admitted to touching, handling and physically helping the officers load up the “evidence“ (in excess of $3,000 worth of inventory in the form of dozens of 5 gallon buckets according to her estimation), all of which is highly unusual referencing the Kansas Attorney General´s Officer´s own testimony.

Mr. Glenn´s company, Clean Start Soap Sales is well established as a distributor of soap products and his manufacturer has been producing product since 1988. Mr. Glenn´s company distributes business cards, promotes publicly on Facebook and openly distributes his product to local flea markets as well as individual sales people“¦not resembling anything of the “underground“, illegal counterfeiting and trademark infringing operation P&G with the help of their Corporate Execs and prosecuting attorneys are attempting to paint Clean Start Soap Sales as.

In contrast, in a comprehensive assessment of state government accountability and transparency done in partnership with Global Integrity the Center for Public Integrity found that the State of Kansas ranked 43rd among 50 states receiving the grade of “F“ as a result of the State Integrity Investigation. A large portion of the preliminary hearing was testimony from Sol Escobar, Senior Engineer for P&G answering questions from prosecuting attorney Steven Karrer spending a great deal of time in fine detail speaking of the chemical composition of the detergent and what separates the different subcategories of scents, colors and consistencies.

All curious and time-consuming testimony being that none of Mr. Glenn´s products claimed to be of Tide´s chemical composition to begin with nor were any labeled as such. P&G is fully invested in trying to make an example out of Brian Glenn and Clean Start Soap Sales. The corporate giant is using the power of the Kansas AG´s office to bolster and enable this bullying tactic to remove the small business owner from impacting their $70 million in detergent sales per year bottom line“¦at any cost, even the personal and professional ruin of a legitimate small business owner.

Given the enormous complexities of legal conclusions regarding what constitutes counterfeiting and trade infringement their were no verbal closing arguments made, instead the Honorable Judge Martin is allowing written arguments to be submitted within 30 days. The hearing will continue on March 24th where it will be determined if this precedent setting case will go to trial or not. Also at that time it may very well be determined that it is P&G and the Kansas AG´s Office that are, in fact in need of a clean start in order to attempt to restore their tarnished public image after this gross misuse of power and taxpayer dollars that are being used for the purpose of attempting to put a local legitimate small business owner out of business.