An out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit challenging the exclusive marketing arrangement for the SweeTango apple has been reached. The lawsuit ended in victory for the University of Minnesota, which bred the apple, and Pepin Heights Orchard, which bought rights to the apple and organized Next Big Thing, a 64-grower cooperative, to grow and market it. The apple came to market in significant volume this fall. A group of more than a dozen growers, mostly in Minnesota, sued the university and Pepin Heights last year, claiming they were denied significant access to an apple developed by their own land-grant university and […]