Nutrition 21’s proven ability to identify, develop and successfully market patented products provides a degree of competitive insulation in the marketplace, and is a competency infrequently cultivated in the nutrition industry. Its intellectual property estate is a distinguishing Company hallmark.

The Company honed its patent expertise in its early years as a biotechnology company focused on anti-microbial drug development, and then translated this expertise to the nutrition sector when it began repositioning itself in 1995 as a nutrition company.

In the past few years, the patent portfolio has contributed to the success and growth of the company in the following ways:

• Out-licensing of nisin and lysostaphin technologies
  
  
• Issued patents have helped establish and maintain a premium market for the nutritional uses of the Company’s flagship ingredient, Chromax® chromium picolinate in the human nutrition and animal feed markets
  
  
• In-licensing and purchase of patents has secured potentially promising opportunities for new chromium applications
  
  
• The competitive advantage secured through newly issued patents on new chromium-based nutrition therapies provides cost justification for the research programs required to bring these new therapies to market
  
  
• Cost-effective patent monitoring and enforcement efforts have made a significant positive contribution to bottom-line results
  

The Company continues to build on its existing intellectual property estate, and actively manages this asset to create added value for all of the Company’s stakeholders.