Heirs
of Richard John Ritchie, credited with reformulating Pepsi-Cola in
1931, filed suit May 4 against PepsiCo Inc. in the U.S. District Court in the
Southern District of New York for the right to share Mr. Ritchie’s
“extraordinary life story’’ with “historians, collectors, journalists and
television and film producers.’’ That
should also include the right to circulate historic documents in the family’s
possession, including one from 1941 spelling out Mr. Ritchie’s recipe for
Pepsi-Cola, the plaintiffs argue. After
Mr. Ritchie died in 1985, the documents were passed to his wife and then to a
son, Richard James Ritchie, who kept them in boxes in his basement in
Pennsylvania before finally looking through them in 2008, according to court
papers. The trove is being held “in a
secure location’’ by Mr. Ritchie’s heirs after PepsiCo demanded the family hand
over all the documents, according to the lawsuit. The family alerted PepsiCo about the documents
in late 2008 and the company warned that any disclosure about its cola formula
would violate trade secrets, it added in its lawsuit. Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo declined to
comment on the matter May 7, citing the litigation. A lawyer for the plaintiffs also declined to
comment beyond the court filing or to make family members available. PepsiCo traces its flagship drink back to the
late 1890s and credits Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina,
with creating it. Mr. Bradham lost
control of the drink in 1923, when Pepsi-Cola declared bankruptcy. A new owner of the company, Charles Guth,
asked Mr. Ritchie in 1931 to devise a better-tasting version of Pepsi-Cola. Mr. Ritchie, a chemist, complied, helping spur
sales of the soda thanks in part to its “unique taste,’’ according to the
lawsuit filed by Mr. Ritchie’s heirs. But
there isn’t any evidence, the heirs allege, that Mr. Ritchie transferred his
intellectual property rights to the company.
Mr. Ritchie’s formula was finally written down in a 1941 document, with
the company keeping the original copy in a bank vault and Mr. Ritchie keeping a
duplicate original of the document. For
the decade before that, the reworked Pepsi-Cola formula was only known by Mr.
Ritchie and Thomas Elmezzi, his protégé and successor, according to the court
filing. The 1941 document “is of
tremendous historical value and of interest to scholars and the general public
as a remarkable artifact of American commercial history,’’ Mr. Ritchie’s heirs
argue in the lawsuit. The civil case is
Joan Ritchie Silleck, the estate of Richard James Ritchie, and Robert Ritchie
v. PepsiCo Inc. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/08/pepsis-recipe-heads-to-court/
What is a Transit of Venus? When Venus
passes directly between earth and the sun, we see the distant planet as a small
dot gliding slowly across the face of the sun.
The next transit of Venus occurs June 5 or 6, 2012, depending on your
location. Find out where to be and when
and read tips for eye safety when viewing
at: http://www.transitofvenus.org/
May 3, 2012
Providence, Rhode Island A few weeks ago, Marie Malchodi, book
conservation technician at Brown University, opened yet
another leather-bound book, one of more than 300,000 rare volumes in the hold
of the John Hay Library. With surgical precision, she
turned the pages of a medical text once owned by Solomon Drowne, Class of ’73
(1773, that is). And there, in the back, she found a piece of paper depicting
the baptism of Jesus. It was signed: “P.
Revere Sculp” Now here, on a small
cart, were 177 more books, all from the collection of Drowne, a doctor and
polymath who distinguished himself during the American Revolution. “Watts’s
Logick.” “Kalm’s Travels.” “Plague and Yellow Fever.” Next up: an 1811 edition of “The Modern
Practice of Physic,” by Dr. Robert Thomas, a champion of purgatives as a cure
for disease. Ms. Malchodi examined the
red leather cover, the gold tooling on the spine. Then she pulled out that
piece of paper. The engraving, titled
“Buried With Him By Baptism,” shows John the Baptist raising Jesus from the
River Jordan under a blazing sun, while people in vaguely Colonial attire watch
from shore. The basement brain trust decided that the
print must be shown to Richard Noble, the rare books cataloger. Mr. Noble’s first
reaction was to say that the engraving was just crude enough to be a Revere. Then he held the engraving up to the light as
a test. It had the faintly ribbed look
of paper produced from the slurry pulp made of rags, signaling that it was most
likely handmade paper from the 18th century. Yes. A Revere. This could very well mean that the patriot — who
had nurtured the seeds of rebellion with his engraving of the Boston Massacre
of 1770 — had cut the scene into a flat copper plate; filled the grooves with
ink, perhaps by pressing it in with the palm of his hand; wiped away the excess
with circular sweeps of a small cloth; and used a hand-operated press to produce
the engraving.
“That was a nice moment,” Mr. Noble said. It turned out that Ms. Malchodi had uncovered
only the fifth known copy of this particular engraving, which is “a bit of a
curiosity in Revere’s work,” according to Lauren Hewes, the curator of graphic
arts at the American
Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. She said that while Revere carefully
documented his prosperous and prolific career as an artisan, he made no mention
of this piece, and so the exact date of the engraving is unclear. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/us/at-brown-university-stumbling-across-a-rarity-in-the-rare-book-room.html?_r=2&hp
The jury deliberating over Oracle
Corp.’s claims that Google
Inc. infringed copyrights protecting Oracle’s Java technology reached a mixed
decision May 7, which could leave Google on the hook for only a relatively
minimal amount of damages. The jury
decided that when Google was developing its Android mobile phone software it
did make use of Oracle’s Java interfaces, or essential building blocks. But it was unable to reach a decision on
whether that was protected under the so-called fair-use doctrine. The jury did find separately that Google
infringed a minimal amount of Java code as it developed Android. But the judge overseeing the case indicated
Oracle would only be entitled to statutory damages as a result, and not a
portion of Google’s profits. The size of
potential statutory damages in the case wasn’t immediately clear, though they
are generally expected to be less than $100,000—or a fraction of the roughly $1
billion Oracle has said it is entitled to for the total amount of copyright and
patent infringement alleged in the case.
In addition, Google’s attorney said he is moving for a mistrial based on
the jury’s inability to reach a verdict on whether Google’s use of Java
interfaces was protected by fair use. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/05/07/mixed-decision-in-oracle-vs-google-copyright-case/
Here's how
Oracle's legal team graphically depicted the issue: http://www.informationweek.com/news/development/java/232901575
Maurice Sendak,
proclaimed "the Picasso of children's books" by Time magazine, has
died at 83. Of the books he wrote,
Sendak said "Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life"
(1967) was his favorite. The nonsense
tale starred a terrier who decides there must be more to life than having
everything. The dog was based on Jennie,
his Sealyham terrier and companion of 14 years, who had gone "to Castle
Yonder," as he wrote in the book. Sendak
considered "Wild Things" part of a loose trilogy of books that
included the award-winning "In the Night Kitchen" (1970), about the
nocturnal adventures of Mickey, who barely escapes being baked into a cake, and
"Outside Over There" (1981), the tale of a baby kidnapped by goblins. At 9, he started writing stories with his
brother, Jack. His sister, Natalie, took
Sendak to see his first Walt Disney film, which led to a lifelong
fascination with Mickey Mouse. In high school, he was an indifferent
student who worked on backgrounds for comic strips such as Mutt and Jeff. He had a comic in the school newspaper and
illustrated a physics textbook for a teacher.
After graduating in 1946, Sendak worked for a window-display company. Two years later, he built mechanical wooden
toys that his brother, an engineer, designed. Impressed by his creativity, FAO Schwarz executives hired Sendak as a
window dresser. His work caught the eye
of noted children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom, who hired him to illustrate
the 1951 Marcel Ayme book "The Wonderful Farm" and became his mentor. Nordstrom arranged for him to illustrate
"A Hole Is to Dig," a whimsical 1952 book of childhood definitions by
Ruth Krauss that established Sendak as an illustrator. To make a living, he illustrated about 20
books in a few years and learned to draw in a variety of styles. He admitted that he owed an artistic debt to
classic Victorian book illustrators but said that most of his original work was
influenced by his Brooklyn childhood. An opera fanatic, Sendak was dumbfounded when
innovative opera director Frank Corsaro — long a fan of "Wild Things"
— asked him to design costumes for a 1980 Houston Grand Opera production of
Mozart's "The Magic Flute." Critics
called Sendak's resulting set designs "sumptuous" with intriguing
undertones of foreboding. Over the next
decade, he designed sets for about 10 operas, including writing lyrics and
designing costumes for his own "Where the Wild Things Are," a
45-minute opera that premiered in Belgium in 1980. A lifelong insomniac, he kept a strict
regimen that included a lengthy dog walk. At his death, he had a German shepherd named Herman
for Sendak's favorite author, Melville. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-maurice-sendak-20120509,0,4823266.story?page=1
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