Nobody else's bullshit alarm is going off here? Just mine?
Seriously?
1) I can readily imagine the _labs_ being contaminated by the reference samples.
2) If the compound is stable, not clumping and not hygroscopic - yes, certainly. “Microscopic” doesn’t do it justice, as there doesn’t seem to be any limit to how small the seed crystals can get.
Since we’re manufacturing literally tons of pharmaceuticals, and carefully manually spreading them over the Earth surface to the pharmacies, so for stable substances it doesn’t seem such an exaggregation to me.
In section 3.3 it says that GSK argued their patent on the new form was being infringed because "there were batches of anhydrate that converted almost entirely into hemihydrate when stored at 40 °C and 75 % humidity within one month."
So "if you keep it wet and warm it will partially convert over the course of a month", and as far as I can tell the "seeding" aspect was not clarified, at least not in the article.
Also it bugs me that the Wikipedia author decided to call the loss for GSK a "technicality". It was decided that it was not relevant that microscopic quantities of the new form were created by accident, I think that is the correct decision and not a technicality.
My thought was more: would it not be possible to counter-sue and get damages from them in court. For after all, they "polluted" your lab / plot with something that you never asked for, and that is now causing damages / lost earnings.
Except this almost never happens. But if it does, Monsanto (now Bayer) will reimburse you the cost of contaminated crops.
Other than that, yeah, I guess it's exactly the same.