Same Sauce, Different Name: When a Business Copies Your Idea

Where I live, we have at least two restaurants that cater to the chicken-fingers-are-my-favorite-food set. And yes, I frequent both of them—frequently.

Even though I've been going to both restaurants for years, I just noticed—this week, in fact—that they're basically the same restaurant, and, (here's the kicker), they both have the exact same "signature" dipping sauce. Of course, the sauces are called completely different things—probably to make people like me think they're completely different sauces. But they're not; they're exactly the same.

Which begs the question: Should someone get in trouble over this?

Geoff Williams tackles this subject in the current issue of MyBusiness in an article called "Coping With the Copycats." A recent New York Times article also covered this subject.

I guess it's a good thing we'll be talking about patents, trademarks and copyrights in the next issue of MyBusiness.