BGG World (BGG) has recently announced favourable result of a lawsuit filed by American River Nutrition (ARN).
ARN claimed infringement of a patent it held on a production process for Annatto Tocotrienols. The US District Court of California, which presided over the case, issued its final decision recently, granting BGG’s motion for a summary judgment of non-infringement. After the Court’s decision, the parties dismissed all claims and counterclaims in the case, so there will be no appeal by ARN of the summary judgment in BGG’s favor, ending the litigation with a complete victory for BGG.
BGG offers a range of Tocotrienol products branded as TheraPrimE® and is the world’s only producer of Tocotrienols from all 3 sources namely Annatto, Rice Bran, and Palm. TheraPrimeE® is a tocotrienol form of vitamin E.
In addition, BGG has the largest production capacity of all Tocotrienol producers, employing a state-of-the-art production system that uses unique technology capable of removing higher levels of contaminants and concentrating the Tocotrienols to over 90% levels. With this technology, BGG can separate and purify each single compound into greater than 98% purity, thereby enabling pharmaceutical applications. “These are very positive improvements over competitive producers still utilizing outmoded traditional processes,” said Yanmei Li, BGG’s Global Chief Scientific Officer. “BGG invests heavily in product development to offer ingredients that lead in their categories. This attention to innovation and quality is the key reason so many brands around the world have come to trust the BGG name.”
Beijing-based BGG, which also has offices in the US and Switzerland, has gained prominence recently as a supplier of astaxanthin, which it produces in a closed tube algae farm in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. BGG also supplies branded extracts of apple polyphenols, bilberries, licorice root and others.
Prior to the court decision, BGG competitor American River Nutrition (ARN) lays claim to being the initial developer of the annatto source of tocotrienols. Annatto (Bixa orellana) is a shrub native to Central and South America which produces seeds rich in red pigment. Developed by ARN Founder Barry Tan, PhD, the process extracts an ingredient high in delta- and gamma-tocotrienol isomers, which have been found to the most potent of the 8 different isomers of the vitamin E. The company brands the ingredient as DeltaGold and says it is the only American-made form of tocotrienol-rich vitamin E. The company has also secured a manufacturing patent on Tan’s work. In 2019, ARN sued BGG over patent infringement.
