Word: vitamins
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...court, antitrust intervened in a patent-infringement suit brought by the foundation. Last week antitrust charged that the foundation has conspired with 16 companies, including Standard Brands Inc., E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Pet Milk Co., Parke, Davis & Co., to suppress competition in the manufacture & sale of vitamin D. They also, said antitrust, limited the potency of vitamin D used in the widely advertised "enriched" bread, milk and other foods, thus preventing such foods from competing with the regular vitamin-D products...
Further, charged antitrust, the foundation has maintained "unreasonable" prices so that those most in need of vitamin D have been unable to afford it. Berge's example: the cost of making vitamin D that sells for from $3.35 to $10.80 is 15?. Berge asked the court to invalidate the foundation's vitamin patents, and open the richly profitable field to all comers, thus bring prices tumbling down...
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...
...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. So far, the university has received $2,500,000. Estimated income this year...
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...