Heinz Stole Idea for Squeezable Condiment Packet, Suit Claims

Don't mess with a man's condiments.

That seems to be the takeaway from a lawsuit filed in Wayne County, Michigan circuit court earlier this month. The plaintiff, David Wawrzynski, says that condiment conglomerate H.J. Heinz stole his idea for a condiment packet that allows consumers to either squeeze the product out or dunk their food right in.

Wawrzynski says that he presented the concept to a Heinz executive in 2008, after working for years to perfect the package design. The idea had been born a decade earlier, when a disgusted Wawrzynski watched a woman at a local fast food restaurant try to rip her ketchup packet open with her teeth.

"It was unsanitary," Wawrzynski told WXYZ Action News, a local ABC affiliate. "I was at a McDonald's and watched the woman put the ketchup packet in her mouth to try and tear it open. Imagine where that packet has been."

He spent the next ten years working to create the condiment packet of the future, and by 2007 he was ready to take it out for a test run. He called a Heinz executive to pitch the idea, and ended up traveling to Pittsburgh to present the concept in person.

"They were very interested in the whole new idea on how to make the condiment packet that would be more efficient," Wawrzynski told WXYZ. According to The Detroit Free Press, Wawrzynski was even "asked to produce 100 samples of his invention to test on a focus group."

Despite the meeting's seeming success, Wawrzynski never heard back from Heinz, and eventually moved on.

Over a year later, though, a relative called Wawrzynski to tell him that she had just heard a Heinz commercial promoting a new condiment package that bore an eerie resemblance to his design. And just like that, Wawrzynski says, his "Little Dipper" had become Heinz's "Dip & Squeeze" -- a product quickly branded a potential "game-changer" by The New York Timesdiner blog.

If this story sounds familiar, it's because it is -- sort of. In 2003, Joseph Shields and Thomas Rinks, also from Michigan, won a $30 million verdict against Taco Bell, which, they claimed, stole their idea to use a talking chihuahua as the center of an advertising campaign.

And, of course, Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeldfame presented his idea for a cologne that makes you "smell like you just came home from the beach" to Calvin Klein, only to have the company steal the idea in a later episode.

Wawrzynski, who says he obtained a patent for his design in 1997, claims that Heinz "took my idea and put their own squeeze on it."