It's official. New Jersey Republicans on Tuesday
chose former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie as their gubernatorial candidate. He'll oppose Gov. Jon Corzine next fall.
Which inspires us to resurface a
quirky detail Christie revealed in financial disclosure statements and The Star-Ledger reported on last month. In 2004, he earned more than $15,000 from royalty rights by investing in Listerine products, such as breath-freshening strips.
"These strips have been a boon to us," Christie laughingly told The Star-Ledger. So it's not like he's hiding anything. It's just that we remains puzzled as to how this came about. As we previously observed, it doesn't seem like Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:NYSE:PFE) (Listerine's owner at the time; it now belongs to Johnson & Johnson [NYSE:JNJ]) or previous owner Warner-Lambert Co. would
have needed outside investors in Listerine or its offshoots.
Maybe those rights were
inherited? Or perhaps Christie invested in some entity that Listerine
rights got passed down to?
We can only muse. But check out this1998
Web page on trade secrets, which cites the "Listerine Formula case," and this Time magazine
article from 1966 (!) on royalty income.
Apparently
Dr. J.J. Lawrence, Listerine's inventor, signed a pretty strong royalty
agreement in 1881 when he sold the product to J.W. Lambert. -
Kenneth Klee
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