David Protein has prevailed in a high-profile legal battle with small food companies accusing it of anticompetitive behavior over the alt-fat ingredient EPG.
The dispute has generated a lot of interest given David’s explosive growth and highlights how access to specialized ingredients can make or break startups. It also tests how far companies can go in locking up critical ingredients to shape emerging product categories.
The litigation began in 2025 after David Protein acquired Epogee, which makes a patented ingredient called EPG that looks and functions like fat, but has a fraction of the calories (0.7cals/g).
Three Epogee customers—OWN Your Hunger, Lighten Up Foods, and Defiant Foods—claimed that they built their business around EPG only to abruptly lose access, and filed a lawsuit accusing David of excluding competition and creating an artificial monopoly in an emerging segment of the protein bar market.
Several other former Epogee customers also gave sworn statements outlining the harm they suffered after losing access to EPG.
David Protein, in turn, said formulators could choose from an “abundance” of alternatives to EPG and said it was under no obligation to keep selling a patented ingredient to firms that had not signed long-term supply contracts.
Lighten Up Foods—one of three litigants—recently decided to settle its claims with David, with each party agreeing to bear its own legal costs. However, the other two said they would keep fighting.
In his final order on the case—which has dragged on for well over a year— US district judge Victor Marrero dismissed the case on two grounds.
First, the plaintiffs had failed to plausibly define the relevant product market, he said. Second, even if the “high-CFP [calories from protein] protein bar” market is the relevant market for antitrust purposes, the plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged that David’s conduct harmed competition in that market.
“At bottom,” said Marrero, “David bars are protein bars that are reasonably interchangeable with other protein bars.”
AgFunderNews has contacted both parties for comment.
More to follow…
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