Ex-monk’s suit alleges L’Oreal theft
He says anti-aging cream flouts patents, undercuts charity
A former Roman Catholic monk has filed a federal lawsuit against cosmetics giant L’Oreal, accusing the company of stealing patented technology in an anti-aging wrinkle cream that his charity was selling to raise money for the poor.
Dennis Wyrzykowski and his company, Carmel Laboratories LLC, have been joined in the lawsuit by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which developed the technology and licensed it to Carmel in 2009.
According to the lawsuit, the cream sold by Wyrzykowski, called Easeamine, is made using technology inspired by the discovery by two university scientists that adenosine, a chemical compound found in the heart, can promote skin elasticity.
The lawsuit, filed in June and amended this month, alleges L’Oreal was aware that the university held the patent for the science. It says L’Oreal had been denied patents because of their similarity to those granted to the university, but that the cosmetics company went ahead with a line of products based on the adenosine technology.
Wyrzykowski, who leads a religious charity known as the Teresian Carmelites in Millbury, Mass., said in an interview Tuesday that he was selling the cream online for $65 per tube to support the Carmelites’ work with prisoners, drug addicts, and schoolchildren.
He said the availability of the L’Oreal products decimated the Carmelites’ business.
“For me, L’Oreal pillaged the poor, that’s what they did,” Wyrzykowski said.
L’Oreal, which is based in Paris and has U.S. operations in New York, has asked a U.S. district judge in Delaware to dismiss the lawsuit. The company’s attorneys argue in court documents that L’Oreal believes its use of adenosine falls outside the University of Massachusetts patents.
“While we admire the purpose of the work these two organizations are doing together, we find no merit in these allegations,” L’Oreal said in an email Wednesday.
“We expressed this point of view in many conversations we had with the Teresian Carmelites and their outside legal advisers over the past two years.”
James Dobson Jr., a nowretired cardiovascular physiologist who was one of the two scientists to make the discovery, said the technology is potentially worth millions of dollars.
“If you know a patent is out there and you willingly infringe on it, that really upsets me,” he said. “What also upsets me is that the Teresian Carmelites were going to use the proceeds for the poor and disadvantaged in central Massachusetts and that was a noble thing to do.”