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Seattle’s Swordsman of Semen Detection
Snooping through your partner’s undies has become big business, and the local man who started it all doesn’t much care for his new competition.
By Vernal Coleman
Published on June 09, 2009 at 7:45pm
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David C. Wong
Bradley Holmes is the self-proclaimed father of the in-home semen-detection industry. His Infidelity Test Kit, called Checkmate, sells for $39 per unit, and he claims to have sold thousands of them each year since he began marketing them in 1999. His product, which uses a simple test to detect the presence of acid phosphatase--an enzyme found in large quantities in male semen--is carried by distributors in foreign countries around the globe. If you suspect your significant other is cheating on you, Holmes' kit allows you to quickly determine if that stain on their undies, or blue dress, is what you think it is.
"I make $1,000 a day without even trying," chuckles Holmes.
So why is he so miserable? Well, like so many fathers, he is disappointed by his offspring—in part because they are giving him competition.
"Ten years ago, we were the only company on earth selling home-based kits," says Holmes. "There were only a few DNA labs around the country." Now there are at least a half-dozen other companies offering home-based semen-detection kits. The number of Web sites and DNA testing labs offering the service is growing each year, he says.
And by all accounts, this is not a development that Holmes has responded to with quiet grace:
"I gotta tell you, Steve, you're a fucking sicko, man. You're a lowlife fucking liar. And I'll fucking kill you one of these days, you son of a bitch. Take note of that and send it to the cops. It might be 20 years from now. It might be next week. But I'm gonna fucking kill you, asshole."
That's part of a voice-mail message Holmes left for one competitor last October. Asked about the message, Holmes is unapologetic: "So what? I'd club that guy over the head like a fish if I could, but I'm an upstanding citizen."
To hear Holmes tell it, there are very few sperm-detection-kit-mongers who are who they claim to be, or who offer products that accomplish what they claim to. He also maintains that many are violating his patent. After 10 years of working seven days a week, he says, he spends much of his time defending himself from the hucksters his product helped spawn. Checkmate, he says, exists on top of the sperm-detection heap—but with that status comes a giant target on his back, and the aftermath has left him an "aggravated, agitated, pissed-off person."
One of Holmes' Web sites, whatsreallygoingon.com, is dedicated almost entirely to refuting what he says are the false claims made against his product.
"The unrestricted nature of the Internet has shattered my life," he says. "I should be the happiest person on earth...and here I am the one who did everything right."
There are others in the industry who disagree.
"Brad Holmes is very, very ill," says Steve Calvert, the Technical Manager of Semen and Sperm Detection Inc. (SSDI), a DNA-testing lab in Euless, Texas—and the intended recipient of the threatening phone message excerpted above.
Since 2003, Calvert and Holmes have been battling over a host of issues, with each accusing the other of unethical business practices.
Calvert, an engineer who got into sperm detection after a slowdown in the aerospace industry, says he first began receiving e-mails from Holmes claiming SSDI's site infringed on the trademarked phrase "Infidelity Test Kit."
According to records at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Holmes did not actually own the phrase at that time (and has never successfully trademarked it). The mark was applied for in 2000 by a North Carolina couple, Tracy and Abulkasim Soussi, but later abandoned. Holmes applied for it the next year, and later sued the couple, alleging that they had purchased a Checkmate kit and then created their own, borrowing heavily from his brochures and materials. The Soussis denied his assertions. The case was later settled out of court.
Holmes says he contacted SSDI and asked Calvert—politely, he says—to remove any use of the phrase on his site, semen-detection.com. Calvert says he received his first communication from Holmes in February 2003, and it was apparently more hostile than Holmes claims.
From the e-mail: "We see by your liberal use of the term 'Infidelity Kit' on your site that you have absolutely no interest in fair business practices' [sic] and frankly we are very angry...[I]f the mark 'Infidelity Test Kit' is eventually warded to us we will have no mercy on the people who screwed us."
"This is Brad's MO," says Calvert. "It's been going on for years now. In his mind, he's developed the perfect system, and so he harasses everyone else who tries to get into the business."
In a motion to dismiss Holmes' suit against them, the Soussis also complained that Holmes had left a number of badgering phone messages.
Others in the industry tell a similar story. Many contacted by Seattle Weekly would not speak on the record for fear of provoking Holmes to renew contact with them. One who would speak on the record, Tom Arriola of Crimescene.com, says that Holmes began leaving harassing voice mails on his answering service not long after Arriola began offering his own semen-detection kit in 2002.
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