The Bitter Battle Over Sweeteners

A few weeks ago the New York Times has a fun article entitled "Makers of Artificial Sweeteners Go to Court" about the lawsuit by Equal™ against Splenda™. Not surprisingly, the market for artificial sweeteners in the United States is a one-and-a-half billion dollar industry.

Equal had once dominated the market, finding its way into more than 6,000 consumer products like Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, the two biggest buyers of artificial sweeteners in the world.

But since Splenda was introduced in late 1999, Equal has steadily been elbowed aside and Splenda is now No. 1, with 62 percent of the market in the United States.

It is unusual for a dispute over advertising claims to go to a jury trial. The case centers on Splenda’s tagline “Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar” — a claim that Equal mocks as an “urban myth” on its Web site.