Word: steenbock
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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High Ethics. Actually the foundation was started to avoid these very evils. After University of Wisconsin's famed biochemist, Dr. Harry Steenbock, made his vitamin discovery,* he wanted to avoid "unscrupulous commercialization" of his find. He decided to let the university make the money, use it for research...
Nine alumni started the foundation in 1925, which has no direct connection with the university. Each put in $100. They picked as president a crack patent lawyer, Chicago's grey-maned, hard-bitten George Haight. Since then, Haight has decided which companies will be licensed to use the Steenbock patents (each pays royalties, averaging 10% and less); how they shall advertise their vitamin products; what fields each could take. Example: Standard Brands could irradiate yeast, but nothing else. In all, the foundation has piled up a fund of $9,000,000. which eventually will go to the university...
Only once has the foundation's rule over vitamin D come close to being broken. Year ago, California's southern district court held that the Steenbock patents were invalid because ultraviolet radiation was a nonpatentable "process of nature." The foundation demanded a rehearing; two months ago, the court withdrew its earlier opinion. (Recently the foundation slashed its royalty charges...
...most valuable researches were still Steenbock's. His ultraviolet-lamp irradiation process was sold to 250 companies for enriching milk, bread, animal feed, drugs, many another edible. (The conscientious Foundation refused to let chewing gum be irradiated, on the ground that it would do gum-chewers no good...
...began to irradiate in defiance of Wisconsin's patents, the Foundation sued. The Circuit Court pointed out that the patents were so sweeping that a farmer who let his alfalfa lie under the sun's ultraviolet rays would be an "infringer." The Court ruled that Dr. Steenbock's finding, though it put the world greatly in his debt, was a "discovery," not a patentable invention. The Foundation will appeal to the Supreme Court...