Some Non-Technical comments about PTFE

We have been very impressed with the high quality of PTFE and PTFE products manufactured by DuPont and/or from those licensed by DuPont to use the Teflon^® mark in connection with these products, and not PTFE of some other manufacturer and of a possibly lower quality. For years, we proudly proclaimed that our tweezers were "Teflon coated", and not "PTFE coated". We described the Braycote^® greases as consisting of colloidal Teflon^® particles and not PTFE particles, because we knew the PTFE particles were manufactured by DuPont. But we can no longer use the "T" word in our copy, website descriptions, invoice descriptions, label descriptions, or trade show signs. And since we have made the business decision to not purchase a license from DuPont so that we could use the Teflon mark (this would unnecessarily add to the selling prices of all of our products), therefore, all such materials sold by SPI Supplies and made from polytetrafluoroethylene, irrespective of who was the manufacturer, are at all times on the SPI Supplies website referred to as "PTFE".

The following letter is the original notification we received from those representing DuPont in essence prohibiting us from using the word "Teflon" to describe our products under the threats of their taking legal action.



We really did not know what to make of this letter. It is not as if we wanted to use the word "Teflon" in order to somehow take some unfair advantage of the Teflon^® name. We were then as now are trying to avoid confusion in the marketplace by using the terminology familiar to our worldwide customer base.

So we wish to apologize in advance to our many customers who will be going to our website word index and looking up under the now forbidden word and not finding what they want to purchase. But we do hope that you will find what you need by looking up under PTFE in the index, specifically, PTFE coated tweezers, PTFE tweezers, PTFE labware, PTFE printed microscope slides, etc.

We have always had a very good feeling and opinion of DuPont, and still do, however we are sure that someone at DuPont, at some future time and with a more reasonable view, will reconsider and once again we will be able to use the now forbidden "T" word.