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Don’t let their traditional role as a supporting character for sandwiches fool you — pickles are big business. And when there’s a legal dustup in the industry, Biglaw gets the call. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, on behalf of Grillo’s Pickles, filed suit against Patriot Pickles, repped by Jones Day, in a lawsuit that could send ripples through deli counters everywhere — or at least at Whole Foods.
The companies are former pickle packaging partners (say that five times fast) and, as reported by Law.com, Grillo alleges Patriot used that arrangement to steal its recipe and formulation process.
Patriot operates a substantial amount of its business with “co-packing” agreements that involve it being contracted to package, label and ship foods for brands owned by others. Patriot was in a co-packing agreement with Grillo’s from 2012 until the summer of 2021. Patriot then began manufacturing Whole Foods 365 pickles this May, according to the company’s complaint.
In the complaint, Grillo’s argued that it and Patriot signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement as part of the co-packing agreement, which forbid Patriot from disclosing Grillo’s “formulas” and “processes” until termination of the agreement.
Grillo claims it did testing which “illustrate[d] a nearly identical profile” between the pickles and say they have “virtually identical nutritional information and are made from precisely the same ingredients as Grillo’s pickles.”
Also worth noting — these similarities are pretty recent:
Whole Foods 365 previously used Hermann Pickles as a co-packaging partner before working with Patriot. Grillo’s claimed the formula and packaging for the Whole Foods 365 pickles when Hermann was its co-packer was “completely different.”
Plaintiff is seeking injunctive relief as well as damages.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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