“…Symrise of Holzminden, Germany; Givaudan of Geneva; International Flavors and Fragrances of New York; and Takasago of Tokyo — spend billions on research to find new smell molecules, patent them and sell them. The innovative scents of these “captives,” as the patented molecules are known, are crucial to enticing consumers to buy the 600 or so new perfumes introduced every year and appealing to buyers of other fragrant products like soaps and air fresheners.”
Yep Jim, the “Big 5” (add Firmenich sp?) have a stranglehold on ALL new commercial fragrance products. Many people don’t know this, but 99.9% of fragrances that you’ll smell or buy across the counter is formulated and produced by one of these firms, and they have staffs of both “famous” and obscure perfumers.
People like Armani, Lauren, Mugler et al, have never formulated a scent, and certainly not the celebrities (JLo etc). They submit a brief to Givaudan (I want it to smell like rain on asphalt in front of a pizzeria in Brooklyn), they smell a few proposals, choose one, design the packaging, and you have 1 of your aforementioned 600 launches/year.
Even companies who have “in-house” perfumers (Hermes, Chanel) get their juice from them based on internally developed formulae.
Our buddy Luca Turin works for a smaller firm designing such molecules. The right molecule can be worth many millions.
So all of you chemists out there… get to work! But work on new pheromones, its the future!
Money. Or protecting one’s hard work.
I don’t think you can patent certain pheromones. I wouldn’t be sure though. It seems a bit… strange to patent biological molecules, especially since we produce some of them. Then again, I’m not a lawyer or very enlightened on that topic. The purpose of patents is to protect the creators of inventions and to encourage people to invent and create new things. Thats about all I know. xD
The patent applications for such things as vomerpherins are interesting. The problem is incorporating a human VNO to make the molecules patentable. Later, it’s discovered there is no human VNO, so what is the value of the patents? In a word: “marketing.” The rallying cry of marketers will continue to be “human pheromones, as seen on TV” and what’s been seen on TV is representative of either unnamed putative human pheromones, or those that activate a non-existent human VNO. The world needs good marketers, but from a scientific perspective good can turn bad with a overuse of buzz words.
Often its the method of isolation/production which is patented, but molecules can be patented, its big money. Fragrance companies (the Big 5, and others) spend millions searching for the new “captive”.
Pheromones are found and chemically isolated from human excretions, but are produced artificially. Produce the right phero-molecule, patent it, and it’ll be worth a hundred Veyrons if it works.
