Food patents

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Food patents

• Dr Jo Shaw

jo.shaw_at_ajpark.com
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Are food patents special?

• Must meet basic criteria
• Novel
• Inventive
• Industrially applicable
• Most traditional foods unpatentable

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Problems to be solved

• Find improved substitute for natural agent
• Sweeteners, flavourers, fat replacements
• Increase storage/handling properties
• Preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilisers
• Make food more nutritious
• Increase vitamin/anti-oxidant/anti-cancer agents

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Types of patents in food industry

• Compounds and compositions
• Food-producing GE plants/animals
• Methods of making or using food products
• Apparatus for making food products
• Packaging of food products

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Sucralose

• Compound patent expired
• Numerous process patents granted

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Olestra

• Fat substitute
• Initial labelling requirements
• This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause
• abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra
  inhibits the
• absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients.
  Vitamins
• A, D, E, and K have been added.

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Compositions

• Fruit juice with probiotic bacteria
• Cocoa products with enhanced level of resveratrol
• Beverage with anti-microbial gas
• Egg replacement comprising wheat protein isolate
  and emulsifier
• Jelly containing alcoholic beverage
• Composition for imparting fresh-brewed flavour to
  coffee
• Extruded legume food snack

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Peanut butter and jelly sandwich

• A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a
• convenient sandwich without an outer crust which
  can
• be stored for long periods of time without a
  central
• filling from leaking outwardly, the sandwich
  including
• a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an
• upper filling and a lower filling between the
  lower and
• upper bread portions, a center filling sealed
  between
• the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge
  along
• an outer perimeter of the bread portions for
  sealing
• the fillings therebetween.

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Food-producing GE organisms

• Golden rice
• Monsantos Round-up ready products
• Monsantos pigs?

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Methods of making food products

• Process for modifying starch
• Method of using polyphenol compounds and
  biofavanoids to alter bubble size of soft drinks
• Process for producing fat-reduced fried foods
• Method of producing vanillin from waste residue
  of rice brain oil

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Packaging

• Edible foodwrap chitosan and lysoszyme
• Square bottomed taco shell

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Traditional knowledge

• Turmeric patent
• Claims to use of turmeric in wound healing
  granted in US patent in 1995
• Traditional knowledge for thousands of years in
  India
• Patent challenged by Indias Council of
  Scientific and Industrial Research
• Produced ancient Sanskrit writings as prior art

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