WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Food fight: Southern Indiana man says company stole his invention

Food fight: Southern Indiana man says company stole his invention

By Janelle MacDonald - bio | email
Posted by Charles Gazaway - email

SCOTTSBURG, IN (WAVE) – It is a legal battle pitting a small time, inventor against a huge corporation and it's all playing out in southern Indiana. He said they stole his invention; the company says not so fast.

Way off the beaten path, inside a shed in rural Scottsburg, Indiana, Gary Hopkins said he came up with a million dollar idea.  

“They call me the mad scientist back in the woods here. It's a better product, better quality food, you could cook it in less time. The whole world is already going to it,” said Hopkins.

If you go into a grocery store, you can see the technology Hopkins said he invented. They are plastic containers that allow you to steam cook frozen food in the microwave.

“From the freezer to the microwave was my concept in my mind's eye,” Hopkins said.

According to Hopkins, the idea came to him about 12 years ago after he tried cooking frozen fish on the stove.  

“I put it in a bowl with a lid on it and noticed that as we cooked it, it was cooking really nice and quick and it was building up pressure, heat and steam in the bowl,” said Hopkins.

From that, an idea was born. Hopkins worked for years, he said, to develop a plastic that would stand up to both the cold of the freezer, and the heat of the microwave.  

“When you get into super cold temperatures, the plastic tends to get brittle and crack or break. You get into super high temperatures, it loses its integrity and wants to collapse,” Hopkins said.

Using a machine he created, Hopkins finally came up with a product that he said worked - a plastic container with steam ports. When it was time to sell his invention, one of the companies Hopkins talked to was containers giant Glad.  

“They were impressed. They were amazed,” said Hopkins. “They said, 'wow, a couple farm guys, my son and I, in southern Indiana come up with this? This is amazing. This is going to revolutionize microwave cooking and storage food containers.’”

John Price, Hopkins' friend and an Indianapolis attorney, said he advised Hopkins to make glad sign a confidentiality agreement to prevent them from stealing his invention. Price said the giant corporation signed the agreement and even asked Hopkins to make some modifications and improvements to his product.

“‘We want you to design a system for us that you can cook in a microwave with the steam technology you've developed and hold it out 4-5 feet from the floor and drop it and it won't pop open.’ He (Hopkins) said, ‘I'll work on that and he came back with a double seal system,’” said Price.

After all that, Hopkins and price said glad ended the working relationship and started producing the product itself.

“What they've essentially said is, 'thank you very much for your donation to our corporation.' Well it doesn't work that way. We didn't donate to the corporation willingly,” Price said.

Now Hopkins, the small time inventor, is suing Glad, and its multi-billion dollar parent, the Clorox Company.

“I call these sometimes David and Goliath cases and David does pretty well in front of a jury in most American courtrooms,” said James Higgins, a Louisville patent attorney who works at Middleton and Reutlinger. 

Jim Higgins said while it's in the early stages, from what he's read so far, Hopkins might have a case.  

“But we haven't heard everything that the company has to say either,” said Higgins. “The position of the companies a lot of times is it's not really new and it could be that he didn't really invent it, that the company already had something working on it.”

“If they really have something to show that they had developed this before, all they have to do is turn that over to the court, prove the dates and they're done, we're done. I haven't seen anything like that because they don't have anything like that,” said Price.

Price thinks he has got a pretty good case. As for Hopkins, he is anything but glad.

“They picked our safe. They took our technology.  They're making millions of dollars on it. Hey! What about the little fat farm guy who showed up and showed you how to do it to start with?” said Hopkins.

WAVE 3 contacted Clorox and a spokesperson told us by email that the company plans to vigorously defend itself, but he couldn't comment further on pending litigation.

In its filings in response to the suit, Clorox pointed out that Hopkins was also trying to get a patent and therefore information on his invention was public record. It said once information is public record, it can no longer be considered confidential. In response, Price said Hopkins gave the company additional information, not contained in the patent application.

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