A TINY Australian company founded by a Yorkshire-born inventor is taking on the huge multinational food group Nestlé in the courts for alleged theft of trade secrets.
At the centre of the case are flavoured drinking straws developed and launched in Australia by Peter Baron for Unistraw. These change the flavour of milk to chocolate, strawberry, banana or caramel when it is sucked through them.
Unistraw has filed an action at the High Court in London against Nestlé for allegedly copying its design. Nestlé has said that it will defend the action vigorously.
The straws are marketed in Australia under the Sipahh brand name. The writ alleges that their design and the recipes are “trade secrets”. It says that Unistraw began talks with Nestlé in 2002 to explore launching the brand elsewhere and that twice Nestlé employees visited its factories and made “detailed notes”. Negotiations broke down, but Nestlé launched its own product allegedly based on the design.