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Linda Arndt ~ Canine Nutritional Consultant
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WYSONG UNDER ATTACK - On My Soapbox

Editorial Introduction:

Key words:

unconscionable, thievery, blackmail, greed, deceit, illegal, unethical, deceitful marketing, extortion, gluttonous conglomerates.

In the early 80's I started to take a great interest in canine nutrition, especially as it related to growth issues and bloat in the large and giant breeds. I lost my first and long awaited Great Dane to bloat, thanks to Purina Chow - a low end grain based food, and set out to learn about bloat as it relates to diet. I started doing research and I came across the writings and research of Dr. Randy Wysong, one of the most respected men in the field of animal nutrition. He was/is visionary and an inspiration to all involved in animal nutrition. Through his research, writings, inventions and great problem solving skills he produced the first holistic foods on the market.

Over the years, when I needed a nutritional answer or the latest research information on diet, I can always count on the "think tank" at the Wysong Corporation to give me true and honest information, as well as the resources where they have gotten the information.

In short - Dr. Wysong is a hero in the Natural Pet Food revolution, which he started 30 years ago in 1979. The Wysong company goes about it's business, researching studying and giving back to the community. The mission is to improve our lives and that of our animals, so we can all have long productive and disease free lives. Now Wysong Corp., a small ethical family run business, is under legal attack from Purina (Nestle), a huge, gluttonous, conglomerate bully, and it sickens me to the core.

In the early years I fed Purina (hell who didn't it was either that or Kennel Bisquet which went in yellow and came out yellow). And I lost my first beloved Dane to bloat thanks to Purina's grain based, inferior dog foods. What frosts my cupcake even more is the fact that Nestle/Purina knows that probiotics are critical to digestive health, and yet they still refuse to use it on their pet foods!

Instead they have underhandedly gotten a patent on Dr. Wysong's special technique for probiotic application. Since 1999 Nestle/Purina, the greedy S.O.B.'s, have the technology to apply probitoics on their pet foods, but STILL REFUSE TO USE IT on the product line. And if that is not enough, now they want the Wysong Corp., the inventor of this process, to pay them for the use of this technology, prior use of this technology and current/future use!!

So that just shows you, this is another big dog food corporation that is "all about the money" and they could care less about our pet's health. I don't know why I expected more out of Nestle/Purina, after all this is the company that makes Beneful, which in my opinion, is one of the most horrendous dog foods on the market. This company has no conscious and no ethics, and rather than stepping up to the plate and improving their pet food line to make a high quality "Natural" product, they would rather use deceitful marketing techniques to make people "think" Beneful is a good food. SHAME ON YOU PURINA...and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy another Nestle product. They certainly aren't the only company that makes chocolate, and I would not be caught dead with a Purina product in this household, if it were the last food available on the planet.

This is just one more way the large conglomerates are trying to control the exploding natural pet food industry. In the next few years I fear other family owned, ethical companies will be attacked in one way or another, and will be consumed by these huge companies with no real concern for our pets. The Honest Kitchen Company, one of my personal favorites, was under attack in Ohio, and thankfully won their "precedent setting"case. It's going to be a tough few years in this industry because these large companies see the smaller family owned companies as a real threat to their profits - and rightly so, pet owners are sick of seeing their dogs suffer or die due to inferior nutrition!

These large conglomerate foods; Iams, Hills, Royal Canin; Eukanuba, Pedigree etc. have expanded their presence to the international market and now pets in South Africa, Asia and Europe etc. also suffer from the same maladies as our dogs. All from feeding dead foods, grain based foods with inferior proteins, and low grade vitamins/minerals with no probiotics/digestive enzymes.

Dr. Wysong, and your staff - I wish you all the best in this endeavor and I will share your plight with as many people as I can through this website to garner some support. This is a battle for any and all involved in the Natural Pet Food Industry.

Linda Arndt
Blackwatch Nutritionals LLC.
Blackwatch Kennels
www.GreatDaneLady.com


PRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE WYSONG CORPORATION, INC.

WYSONG UNDER ATTACK

Let’s say you were trying to find a way to wean the kids off sweets to stop the cavities and dentist bills. So you spent a lot of time researching and experimenting and came up with a sugarless cookie that if sprinkled with a little herb you discovered, stopped the cavities.

You decided to set up a little bakery and sell the cookies so other parents could benefit. You made your discovery no secret, in fact you wrote articles and books describing how you did it.

Years passed and you noted that other bakeries were copying you. Nevertheless, you knew that kids were benefiting so you didn't’t fret about that too much, even when they tried to convince their customers that they were the inventors. Besides, you didn't have the resources to go through the patent process, so really everyone had a right to it.

Then one day you received a letter from an attorney on staff at a mega-billion dollar corporate conglomerate cookie bakery. He said he had a patent on your cookie. What? You do a little investigation and discover that their patent came fifteen years after you made the discovery and were selling cookies all over the country.

So you write back and tell him this. He responds and says that if you do not pay him a commission on your last six years of cookie sales, and a commission on all your sales into the future, he will sue you in federal court. You again remind him that he can’t do that because you were first. He can’t steal your idea, patent it, then demand a ransom using the threat of suit.

He says, oh yes he can, and that you better settle up or face two to three million dollars in legal fees for patent litigation. After all, he says, what you are being asked to pay him is not as much as the legal fees will be, so why not just pay him and be done with it.

The other companies that had copied you actually were infringing on the patent since they began baking the cookies after the date of the patent. Thus they had no defense other than to rely on you to prove the patent invalid. But that would mean you could incur huge legal costs and really not gain anything other than to continue what you had always been doing. The only real winners would be the companies who had copied you, since without you they would either have to stop selling the cookies or pay the six-year penalty and commissions to the patent holder.

If you capitulate and pay, you get branded as a patent infringer. You will also have to increase the price of your cookies, as will all the other companies, to cover the commissions. That means that all the parents buying the cookies will now have to pay an inflated price. It will also stick in your craw that although the mega cookie manufacturer suing you describes in detail in their patent how kids’ cavities can be prevented, they don’t even use your invention in their own cookies! They just want to make money off other companies doing it.

What would you do?

Believe it or not, this is the exact dilemma Wysong now faces.

We appreciate any encouragement or thoughts you may have about our David and Goliath battle. And do not fear, we are here to stay and you will continue to receive out best efforts to give you good health information and products like you have come to expect.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Wysong Corporation
989.631.0009
989.631.9280
Wysong@Wysong.net
www.Wysong.net


NESTLE/PURINA VS THE NATURAL PET FOOD INDUSTRY

Midland, Michigan – Nestec S.A. (better known as Nestle), parent company of Purina, a pet food manufacturer based in St. Louis, Missouri, and Wysong Corporation, a health education and nutritional development company in Midland, Michigan, have filed suits against one another in the Eastern District Federal Court in Missouri.

The suits are related to a technology invented by Dr. Wysong in the early 1980’s to enrobe pet and human foods with probiotics – health giving organisms such as found in yogurt. Although Wysong did not seek a patent, it has used the technology in both animal and human foods since the early 1980s. Due in large part to Wysong’s educational efforts and product development, probiotics have become a part of the collective health consciousness of the public and food industry. Of late, many natural pet food companies have begun using Dr. Wysong’s technology as well.

Nestle/Purina obtained a patent granted in 1999 for the same technology. To this date, however, Purina has not incorporated probiotics in its own products. Instead, it is attempting to prevent Wysong and other companies from enrobing dry extruded pet foods with probiotics unless a licensing fee is paid to Purina.

A patent is not valid if the invention (prior art) exists in the public domain prior to the patent. The evidence of Wysong’s prior art for over fifteen years before the 1999 Nestle patent was granted is, according to Wysong, incontrovertible and ample. In fact, within the last few years just a portion of Wysong’s prior art evidence swayed a European patent review board to deny Nestle/Purina a like European patent. The decision was upheld upon appeal.

These facts have been repeatedly made known to, but ignored by Nestle/Purina in their suit filed against Wysong. Purina’s ultimatum is that Wysong either pay sales-based licensing fees (essentially, royalties) going back six years and forward into the future, or pay for expensive patent litigation.

Wysong, a small family owned company, is unwilling to pay licensing fees to the multibillion dollar Nestle/Purina for what amounts to Wysong’s own invention, and consequently now finds itself being sued by a company literally hundreds of times its size. Purina takes the position that since they were granted a patent they have a right to enforce it.

Wysong argues that the patent should have never been granted, is invalid and unenforceable, and that any attempt by Purina to use the threat of litigation costs to force licensing fees is unethical and illegal. Since Wysong publicized and used the technology in products distributed nationally for more than 15 years prior to the patent, Wysong claims that the patent holders copied Wysong art and did not reveal this to the patent office when filing. Thus, Wysong has either filed or is exploring the filing of claims against Purina for Sherman Act violations/patent misuse, misleading the United States Patent Office, failing to comply with the U.S. Patent Laws, including 35 USC §101-103, 111-113 and 133, improper attempts to monopolize the market, unfair competition, antitrust violations, false advertising under the Lanham Act, state claims for deceptive trade practices, RICO violations, and punitive damages under the Clayton Act.

Wysong Corporation

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