Fake Broccoli Sprouts

FakeBroccoli Sprouts?

SproutNet

International Specialty Supply

January 6, 2002

Dear Bob

“Hope this New Year 2002 finds all of you well. Youmight be interested in the following Letter to the Editor (reproduced below)that was written by Talalay and Fahey, and published in the Baltimore Sun on 13November 2001.

Theremay be one or more factual falsehoods in this letter, but what I wish to focuson is the illogic contained in it… The following is a sentence you’ve probablyheard before:

“Thus the effort to secure patent protection for sprouts containing highlevels of these compounds was essential to ensure the public received broccolisprouts with the potential to help them.”

The sentence seems to imply that their patent on cruciferous sprouts containing”high levels” of sulforaphane, somehow keeps the “fakers”off the market, those “fakers” being ones who allegedly sold sproutshaving low or zero levels of sulforaphane. Well, that is logically impossible onthe face of it, of course. Their patents seemed to only give the right toexclude others from selling sprouts with “high” levels (or so theyhave argued at various times). This would theoretically leave the market in afree-for-all situation with regards to who could sell sprouts with”low” levels. (This does not take into consideration the misuse of apatent to threaten injunctions upon people who are non-infringers).”