Frito-Lay issued a firm statement Monday declaring that it “does not and will not negotiate with individuals who have read the patents,” a position company officials described as longstanding despite nobody having asked.
The statement arrived on Day 8 of the standoff at Nabisco headquarters in New Jersey, some 1,500 miles away, where Lansing author Cat Clark has not once said the word Frito-Lay.
“We just want to be clear about where we stand,” said a company spokesperson. “We stand very far away, in Texas, with the doors locked.”
Sources inside the company said the statement was drafted after a junior analyst searched a public patent database for the phrase “vanishing caloric density” and found the results “concerning, in that they were ours.”
The statement went on to affirm that Frito-Lay’s chips “melt in the mouth for reasons of consumer delight” and that any suggestion the 0.04-second dissolve time was designed to clear the palate before the brain registers intake is “a question for our scientists, who are unavailable.”
Reached on the lawn, Clark said she had no plans to visit Texas, then asked a reporter to repeat the phrase “consumer delight” so she could write it down.
At press time three additional food companies had released statements declining to comment on a lawn they are not on.
