employees were calling, saying 'When will the cookies be delivered?' We said, 'Never.'"

Siegal says Moulavi would double his profits by cutting his franchise parent out. He'd get even more money for himself by not buying Siegal's products anymore, Siegal says.

But Moulavi maintains that there wasn't anything sinister about his motives.

"As franchises opened, operators realized that the name Siegal was not well known," Moulavi's lawyers asserted in court documents. As early as June of 2005, he stopped using the Siegal name because it "was not driving significant business."

In 2002, Dr. Siegal had registered eight trademarks to protect his business, including "Siegal Medical Group," "The Siegal Cookie," and "Siegal Diet Program" — but not "the cookie diet." The term, as Moulavi saw it, was there for the taking. In 2005,label over the word "Siegal" on the package. Furthermore, Moulavi advertised his diet using a photo of someone who'd lost weight — on Siegal's diet. And on his websites, he planted the words "Siegal" and "cookie diet" as metatags in the source code. Now it was Siegal's turn to unleash the lawyers.

In February of 2007, Siegal filed a federal lawsuit through his company SM Licensing Corporation. He may never have registered the term "the cookie diet," he argued, but he owned it as a common-law trademark based on having invented the diet more than 30 years earlier. Furthermore he claimed that Moulavi's website amounted to "cyberpiracy." Siegal, the complaint alleged, had suffered "serious and irreparable harm."

Moulavi claimed he had registered the trademark fair and square. Now that he