restaurants meet lawyers: this is what it has come to?!?

[cbelt3]

Lawyers (who are not paying customers) in restaurants should be treated like rats and roaches.

[raz]

One definition of "irony" is taking the text of a copyrighted article on intellectual property abuse and posting it in another forum while decrying the victim's efforts to protect her property.

[Gutenberg]

Ownership of recipes is a hot subject over at the Baking Circle, a discussion forum on the King Arthur Flour website. Someone will post a recipe and arguments will erupt and people will make sweeping pronouncements and leave the forum for a while. Sound familiar? My philosophy is if it's published in a book, refer to the book and suggest that someone can check it out of the library if he doesn't want to buy the book. If it's been published in a newspaper, then it's fair game, because the author of the recipe intended it to be widely disseminated without royalty. Internet does not count because people are so careless with attribution, so you should not simply pick up a recipe from the internet and post it.

As far as this woman's argument goes, I don't know how far you can go in copyrighting a lobster roll. But if Ed's restaurant is similar enough to hers that reasonable people would confuse the two, then she may have a point.

[Racer X]

There was a regional pizza delivery chain up here in western washington about 10 years ago. It was started by ex managers and supervisors from Domino's. Instead of everything being red and blue, the colors were flipped, and were blue and red. Even the same colors of red and blue (Process Blue is one of the colors). Almost identical menu, same store fixtures and same suppliers for most of the ingredients.

Oddly enough, they were shut down for trademark infringement. The identity of something is tied up in their look and feel, as much as the specific balance of ingredients in the sauce.

Even though she didn't have trademarks registered, I doubt she will have much trouble with a judge. The fact that the owner of the other place was a former employee pretty much precludes any defense of "I had no idea that there was another restaurant like mine"

[raz]

From "Coming to America" ...

[mrbigstuff]

[quote raz]One definition of "irony" is taking the text of a copyrighted article on intellectual property abuse and posting it in another forum while decrying the victim's efforts to protect her property.
incorrect analogy. if the article posted was done so under the premise of another author or missing the byline, or the publishing company, then, yes.

[Seacrest]