Your summer glow does not need a $185 price tag.

For twenty years, the serum in that $185 bottle was protected by law. US Patent 7,179,841 B2 was filed on January 11, 2005, and gave one company the exclusive right to sell what it described. On March 24, 2025, it expired.

The formula is public now. Which makes the question that matters a different one: who is making it, and what are they charging for it?

So who is Brandefy?

We work with the same chemists, dermatologists and prestige manufacturers that produce for the brands on the department store counter. This serum is custom formulated and made on the U.S. East Coast. We don't name the facilities, for the same reason the prestige brands don't.

What we don't carry is everything wrapped around the bottle — the retailer's cut, the counter, the campaign. That represents the significant distance between $185 and $55.

What our Defend Serum actually does

Three actives, each there for a reason. 15% L-ascorbic acid — pure vitamin C, the form skin can actually use — to help support a brighter, more even-looking tone. Vitamin E alongside it. And 0.5% ferulic acid, which holds the other two stable.

That trio is the morning antioxidant step the original made famous. Same three — and both companies print them on the box.

From someone who paid the $185

One customer has paid both prices.

What the patent actually covered

Not a brand name, and not a bottle. It covered a combination: L-ascorbic acid, a cinnamic acid derivative — ferulic acid — a solvent system and water, held at a pH of about 3.5 or lower, vitamin E optional.

In the commercial version the headline number is 15% L-ascorbic acid, with tocopherol and ferulic acid alongside. Printed, not implied.

Who owned it

The inventors named on the patent are Jan E. Zielinski and Sheldon R. Pinnell — a Duke dermatologist who spent his career on this exact problem, and solved it. The formula deserves its reputation, and so does he.

But the patent was not his to sit on. It was assigned to L'Oréal USA Creative, Inc.

For two decades, what the patent protected was not a scientist's discovery. It was a conglomerate's exclusive right to be the only one selling it, at a price nobody could undercut. That is the bargain: twenty years of protection, then the knowledge belongs to everyone. The twenty years are up.

What expiring changed

For twenty years there was no choice to make. One serum had this chemistry, one price sat on it, and your only decision was whether to pay it.

Since March 24, 2025, any company may legally make this formula. We won't tell you the two serums are identical. What is true is narrower: the actives that made the original worth $185 are the actives in ours and we have thousands of happy customers.