Two retired food scientists are locked in an epicurean feud with the University of California over the fate of the strawberry.
The university is preparing for trial in federal court [May 2017] in a case alleging its former employees—Douglas Shaw and Kirk Larson—stole the school’s intellectual property when they decided to set up a strawberry-breeding business.
For years, the two scientists—both former professors at the university’s campus in Davis—had conducted painstaking research in the lab and strawberry fields in a quest to figure out how to grow a strawberry that’s bigger, brighter, and stays sweeter for longer than average. They apparently made a lot of progress [they named their venture named California Berry Cultivars]; the scientists have filed a $45 million countersuit against the university, claiming it unfairly kept their research locked away in a freezer—research that could be a major boon to the strawberry industry writ large, according to the Associated Press.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: A bitter legal battle in California is blocking everyone from eating sweeter strawberries