The family of Richard Ritchie, the man who created the formula for Pepsi-Cola in 1931, is giving PepsiCo Inc. a hard blow. They sued the manufacturer of soft drinks, because they want to erase any doubt about the documents that belong to Ritchie, documents that PepsiCo said that they were owned by company and were to be disclosed to historians, collectors and movie producers.
The conflict over property rights of the documents and invention of the magic formula takes place since a few years ago as Pepsi tried many times to gain legitimacy over the formula property, which it would have liked to share with historians and film makers.
Richard Ritchie was a chemist at the Loft Candy Company, in the United States, where he developed the secret Pepsi-Cola formula for Loft, in 1931. He then worked for Pepsi, and in 1962 joined Cantrell & Cochrane. In 1982 he retired from professional life. He died three years later.
A lawsuit was filed in the Manhattan federal court by Ritchie’s daughter and son, Joan and Robert Ritchie. The pair said for the U.S. press that “they wanted to tell the extraordinary story of their father”, without any interference or threats of litigation from the Pepsi company, notes Business Insider. Spokespersons of the company, based in New York, could not be reached for comment, writes Business Insider.
The accusers ask in the U.S. court for damages that can not be disclosed. Pepsi is accused of “improper interference with their rights in the Ritchie invention and the Ritchie documents”. American press writes that these documents were physically and mentally controlled by a member of the Ritchie family for 50 years.
According to the court case, “the heirs are the rightful owners of Ritchie’s inventions”, because, among other things, “Pepsi failed to require that Mr. Ritchie transfer ownership to the Ritchie invention to Pepsi despite knowing that he had developed the Pepsi-Cola formula while working as an employee of another company”.
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