Last week, the United States District Court in Minnesota issued an opinion in a lawsuit brought in September 2007 by five Minnesota hunters against ALS Enterprises, the manufacturer of Scent-Lok products, and some of its retail partners. The court ruled in ALS’s favor on some issues, and against ALS on others. On a narrow legal issue, the court determined that the word “eliminate” in some of Scent-Lok’s advertisements could only mean eliminate 100% of odor, and therefore some of these advertisements were false.
ALS respectfully disagrees with the court's ruling that "odor eliminate" can only mean 100% elimination. There are many products on the market advertised as "eliminating" some condition and people understand that they do not eliminate the condition 100%. A search of the term “eliminate odor” produced over 1.9 million references to the term. A search of “odor eliminator” produced 281,000 results.
Of note, the court’s ruling does not relate to the efficacy of Scent-Lok products to perform in the field. Scent-Lok products work, and work well. Laboratory tests, including tests conducted in the lawsuit show that Scent-Lok carbon-containing clothing dramatically outperforms no-carbon clothing at adsorbing odors.
In a survey of Minnesota hunters conducted as part of the litigation, almost 80% of hunters who purchased activated-carbon clothing reported that they were very satisfied or satisfied with the performance of their odor control hunting clothing.
Survey experts noted that this score was very high for this type of survey.
Scent-Lok Technologies stands by its products and their ability to dramatically reduce human odor levels in the field to help hunters get close to game. Our extremely low return rate for odor issues suggest that our engineering is sound and our tests provide correlation to field success. That is why Scent-Lok offers an unconditional satisfaction guarantee.
ALS intends to appeal the court’s ruling and to continue to actively defend against this lawsuit.
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