Jul. 29—An escalating legal battle among co-founders of a Bakersfield table-grape breeding company could have lasting implications for growers of Kern County's top crop.

International Fruit Genetics LLC filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing co-founder Jack Pandol and his company, Shafter-based Grapery, of appropriating trade secrets to plan a competing operation with an unfair market advantage.

Grapery's CEO denied the company used IFG's proprietary information as part of ongoing efforts to improve its market position. He called the suit retaliation for Grapery's success getting a July 15 injunction in Kern County Superior Court that temporarily halts IFG from selling its assets to a Spanish-owned food innovation company.

At stake is more than how soon IFG sells. Pandol, as 25-percent owner of IFG and exclusive grower and marketer of its popular Cotton Candy variety of table grapes, says he is in danger of being unfairly cut out of his contractual, one-quarter share of the company's new product innovations.

But IFG, which also breeds cherries, says Grapery has improperly leveraged Pandol's long influence at IFG, and his company's access to IFG's proprietary data, to kick off a new division that could take away the Bakersfield breeder's customers without having to invest in the requisite years of research.

Much of the conflict dates to an unsolicited, third-party purchase offer IFG received last summer. Grapery was invited to make a bid, and as part of that process, it received confidential information about IFG's proprietary fruit varietals, pricing, sales volume and other extensive insights, according to IFG's lawsuit.

Pandol's suit said he opposed the sale because he worried about losing his rights under his operating agreement with IFG.

Regardless, the 75-percent owners of the company, the Stoller family, went forward with a sale announced in March that still has not cleared a key regulatory hurdle.

The injunction issued earlier this month largely passes the matter to an arbitration panel; it will not necessarily halt IFG's proposed sale. An update on the panel's deliberations was not available Thursday.

The injunction decision essentially found that Pandol, who has long served as a manager at IFG and was the company's interim CEO from April 2016 to February 2017, has some likelihood of prevailing in court with his assertion that the sale of any IFG variety cannot be carried out without his consent.