Details weren’t available as the settlement agreement reached Thursday between Tahitian Noni International Inc. of Provo and XanGo LLC of Lehi was confidential, and all court documents concerning the dispute are sealed.

Tahitian Noni sued XanGo and several of its top executives in February 2003 in 4th District Court in Provo, alleging the executives stole Tahitian Noni’s concept for a mangosteen-based supplement while they were employed by the Provo company’s parent, Morinda Co.

The lawsuit also claimed Morinda has exclusive intellectual property rights to XanGo’s juice supplement and sought a constructive trust be imposed on all of XanGo’s assets, business opportunities, benefits and profits.

But XanGo disputed Tahitian Noni’s allegations in a countersuit. Aaron Garrity, XanGo’s president and chief operating officer, in a previous interview with the Daily Herald said the idea for the business took root when Joe Morton, one of XanGo’s founders, stumbled on the mangosteen fruit at a restaurant in Malaysia and found numerous scientific reports that supported the health benefits of the tropical fruit.

In a joint statement Thursday, Tahitian Noni and XanGo said they have “agreed to resolve their disputes and the litigation between them and their founders.”

“Both sides are satisfied with the terms of the agreement, which are strictly confidential, and they look forward to moving on and focusing their efforts on the continued success of their respective businesses,” the companies said in Thursday’s joint statement.

Randall Smith, Tahitian Noni’s chief financial officer, declined further comment. Its media representatives, Andre Peterson and Mike Weingarten, didn’t return calls for comment.

Bob Freeze, XanGo’s vice president of public relations, also declined comment on the settlement. But he says the company can continue to sell its mangosteen juice supplement and there won’t be changes to either company’s business operations.

Founded in 2002 with just 14 workers, XanGo has nearly 600 employees today and nearly 500,000 distributors worldwide.

Industry experts say intellectual property lawsuits tend to be commonplace in the nutraceutical industry because supplement makers are trying to protect or prevent the theft of their ideas and products.

Case in point, Neways International and Nature’s Sunshine are in a legal battle over rights to the formula of a top-selling energy supplement.

Neways claims Nature’s Sunshine misappropriated “multiple formulations” of Neways’s Maximol Solutions and marketed it as their product, SyneMax. Maximol is a liquid nutritional supplement composed of minerals, amino acids, enzymes, vitamins and other nutrients. That case is pending in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City.

Another intellectual property dispute involved Nu Skin Enterprises and a Salt Lake City company over license rights to a medical scanning technology.

That case was quietly settled in March when Nu Skin bought the company’s license rights to the patented technology for an undisclosed sum.

That enables Nu Skin to continue leasing its BioPhotonic scanners, which were developed with that technology. The scanners — which measure the body’s level of antioxidants — are used by Nu Skin distributors to market Pharmanex nutritional supplements.

Grace Leong can be reached at gleong@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.