Over at The Atlantic, there's a discussion of trademarking cocktail recipes. A bartender* who gave a seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, the big yearly cocktail convention in New Orleans, on "protecting one's intellectual property as a bartender" is quoted saying:

"Someone needs to get sued... to set a precedent."

This fellow, Eben Freeman, is "best known as the creator of smoked Coke and 'solid' cocktails at the now-defunct Tailor in Manhattan's SoHo."

Here in Seattle, Andrew Friedman, the owner of Liberty, responds:

So, let me get this straight: First the guy makes sense when he decries “the whole culture of the celebrity chef “ in the cocktail world, and then he goes on to want to sue someone for co-opting a recipe for a cocktail? He goes from being the voice of reason to the voice of idiocy in three paragraphs flat. I was at Tales of the Cocktail, and I can assure you that there were many great and notable seminars (did you miss the Suntory Hibiki blending seminar? Ooooo. That was amazing), but this so-nuff was not one of them. Sorry, Eben—you’ve done some great things for the cocktail world, but this nonsense does you no favors.

Over at Techdirt, they're siding with Liberty (calling Freeman "another person in another industry whining about not getting enough monopoly privileges") and also providing some enlightenment about intellectual property in general (and trademark law vs. copyright law vs. patent law specifically).

Good lord. Is it cocktail o'clock yet?

*Or maybe "liquormaestro"? One senses he wouldn't want to be called a bartender, and I believe the term "mixologist" has been officially shunned.