“It’s vegetable plagiarism,” Jerry Seinfeld joked on the Late Show With David Letterman. Mushed-up carrots hiding in a casserole and broccoli buried in chicken nuggets are one thing, while plagiarism is another, as Missy Chase Lapine learned when her lawsuit against Jessica Simpson for her book, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, was thrown out by a federal judge in Manhattan in September of 2009. In April of 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, upheld the original decision, denying the plaintiffs’ claims of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and trademark dilution.  The decision can be found here.

Lapine had accused Seinfeld of stealing her ideas from her cookbook, The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals, which had been published six months before Seinfeld’s. Some of the strange food combinations appear in both books, such as avocado in chocolate pudding or spinach in brownies, but, as U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled, Seinfeld’s book did not infringe the copyright and trademark of the plaintiff’s book. She stated that the works appealed to different audiences and Seinfeld’s book had “a completely different feel.”

This is a useful example of the copyright concept of “idea vs. expression.” An idea is not copyrightable, but the expression of that idea is, e.g. the idea of a cop show vs. its specific expression in the TV show Law & Order. No one has a monopoly on an idea—such as getting kids to eat better by hiding veggies in their meals. The fact that both were cookbooks and had similar subject matter did not mean that plagiarism was present. As Judge Swain said, “the protection granted a copyrightable work extends only to the particular expression of the idea and never to the idea itself.”

As far as the claims of trademark infringement and trademark dilution, the court found that there was no likelihood of consumer confusion between the two trademarks, especially considering the defendant’s use of the famous “Seinfeld” name.

Lapine had filed her suit against Seinfeld after Seinfeld’s book was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and became a Number 1 The New York Times best-seller and reached Number 1 on Amazon.com.