Peggy Lawton Kitchens, Inc. v. Hogan

Nothing is sacred.2 We have before us a case of theft of a recipe for baking chocolate chip cookies. The issue is whether the plaintiff, Peggy Lawton Kitchens, Inc. (Kitchens), possessed a protected trade secret.

A Superior Court judge found that Kitchens first added chocolate chip cookies to its line of prepackaged bakery products in 1960. They were an *938indifferent success. In 1963, Lawton Wolf, a principal officer of Kitchens, mixed the chaff from walnuts (“nut dust” he called it) in his chocolate chip cookie batter. This, as the judge found, “produced a distinctive flavor. It was an…