Serial startup founder Ryan Breslow is at the center of a trademark infringement lawsuit involving his cryptocurrency pharmaceuticals startup, Love Health. The company was sued last month for allegedly providing goods and services that are “identical” to those of Love Wellness, a lifestyle brand founded by The Hills reality TV star Lauren Bosworth.
One of the world’s youngest billionaires, 29-year-old Breslow dropped out of Stanford University to cofound the payments startup Bolt in 2014, and Forbes estimates his stake in Bolt was worth $1.1 billion. Last January, however, following a controversial Twitter rant about payments rival Stripe and startup accelerator Y Combinator, Breslow stepped down as Bolt’s CEO to become its executive chairman. He has since launched several other projects, including Movement DAO and Love Health — both the subjects of ongoing legal battles.
The new complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, primarily challenges Love Health’s usage of trademarks that incorporate the word “LOVE” in connection with the sale of supplements and personal care products. This includes the defendant’s online marketplace Love.com, which currently offers a selection of goods like Ayurvedic capsules and $44 seaweed bites. Love Wellness operates a similar storefront and claims that after being served a cease and desist order, Love Health “deliberately and willfully continued to use” the infringing trademarks.
“Love Wellness first learned about Love Health and its infringement on the Love Wellness trademarks in mid-May, from a TechCrunch article that had run earlier that month,” the plaintiff’s counsel Airina L. Rodrigues of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck told Forbes in an email. “The Love Wellness brand has been developed and nurtured by Lauren Bosworth and her team for several years, and they will work vigorously to defend the brand.”
Bosworth founded Love Wellness in 2016 “after she personally experienced a host of physical ailments and struggled to find care,” the complaint states. Love Wellness is itself being sued for alleged copyright infringement in a District Court of Minnesota by Opulus Health, over a competing vaginal health suppository. Opulus Health did not respond to a request for comment.
In a response to the complaint, Love Health wrote that it “denies committing any infringement and denies any liability to Plaintiff.” Love Health’s legal counsel did not respond to a request for comment, and Breslow declined to comment on the company and ongoing lawsuit.
After stepping down as CEO of Bolt, Breslow reemerged two months later with a new startup called Love (now “Love Health”), announcing that he would serve as its part-time and non-operational chairman. The company’s pitch was “People-Powered Pharma,” or crowdfunding clinical trials for alternative therapeutics.
Breslow seemingly hatched the idea for Love Health, Inc. in 2021, according to a Delaware business incorporation filing. Its earliest members included JR Rahn, a cofounder and former CEO of psychedelics biotech company MindMed, and Ashwath Rajan, known for his company Bodega, a grocery retail platform that the Washington Post dubbed “America’s most hated startup” that has since pivoted to AI-vending machines. Both cofounders left Love Health before its marketplace launched.
“What if we could test if Turmeric can cure cancer? Or if breathing exercises could cure depression?” Breslow wrote. (Forbes noticed disclaimers on Love.com warning that products are “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”) He additionally claimed that Love Health would rely on crypto to “unlock our collective ability to test these things,” which reportedly involved issuing tokens to future clinical trial participants.
In September, Breslow told Forbes that Love Health so far raised $7.5 million at a $180 million valuation from MaC Venture Capital and Human Capital. But he had not invested his own funds into the project. Streamlined Ventures invested a further $3 million at a $60 million valuation in October, according to Pitchbook.
Love Health launched its marketplace in May but has neither issued a cryptocurrency nor supported any pharmaceutical trials. Still, Breslow told TechCrunch that it had secured additional capital, bringing its funding to nearly $20 million. Today, the company’s sole focus appears to be wellness products and its Time for Love Foundation, a charitable fund “dedicated to supporting initiatives that promote the health and wellbeing of ourselves, each other, and the planet,” whose endorsers include cryptocurrency entrepreneur and Love Health advisor Brock Pierce.
“Raising money is not what it was 18 months ago,” Breslow told Bloomberg in May of the company’s new vision. “The expectations are higher for the capital. You have to execute and show results.”
The Love Wellness trademark infringement case is the second of three separate suits that Breslow has become embroiled in over the past six months. Last week, The Information reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had probed statements made by Breslow, to investors over Bolt’s financial condition when raising the startup’s $355 million Series E round in 2021.
Earlier this month, Bolt investor Activant Ventures filed a lawsuit against Breslow in the Delaware Court of the Chancery. The venture fund claims that Breslow removed three investors from the board of the payments startup after they challenged his decision not to pay back a $30 million loan he drew from JP Morgan.
Breslow is also locked in legal action against the developer he hired to build a crypto-based rival to JustGiving or GoFundMe called Movement DAO. Breslow claims in the ongoing Florida court case that Mark Phillips, who was convicted of four counts of wire fraud in 2010, had seized control of Movement DAO along with $16 million that Breslow, and his partners, had invested in the project.
Read the full article here
