The results are in--Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry's wife) 1, MIssy Chase Lapine 0.
The court battle was over a copyright dispute. Lapine wrote "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals." A few months later, Jessica Seinfeld came out with "Deceptively Delicious : Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food."
MIssy sued Jessica, and things got ugly when Jerry made fun of Ms Chase, saying she was accusing his wife of "vegetable plagiarism." This led to charges that Jerry's comment constituted a "malicioius, premeditated and knowingly false and defamatory attack."
Jeez, it was a joke. Not a great joke admittedly but not attempted murder...
Anyway, a federal appeals court ruled recently that the books were not confusingly similar and that you can't copyright the idea of hiding healthy ingredients inside foods that kids actually like to eat.
I wonder how many organic carrots those legal fees could have bought?
Seriously, though, it brings home the key point about copyright protection: you can't protect an idea, only the execution of an idea. If Lapine could show that Seinfeld had directly copied her recipes, she would have had a good case. I'm in the process of finishing up a report on "Protecting Your Material" that goes into copyright, trademarks, Creative Commons, and whether or not it's a good idea to use "the poor man's copyright" (mailing your manuscript to yourself to establish a date that it existed, and more. I'll post here when it's ready.
(For guidance on writing your own book, see "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available at Amazon and your other favorite online or offline retailers.)
