A New York federal judge has more than halved attorney fees due to an Ethiopian cookbook author who was wrongly sued for copyright infringement, finding that her defense counsel billed “excessive” hours for often straightforward work.
In July, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York lambasted the plaintiff, author of a different Ethiopian cookbook, for bringing “unreasonable” claims in Schleifer v. Berns, 17-cv-1649. And he awarded an as-yet-undetermined amount of attorney fees to the defendant. In the lawsuit, author Ian Schleifer had falsely alleged that Kittee Berns’ 2015 cookbook—”Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking”—used protected information from his 2007 (and second edition 2016) cookbook, “Ethiopian-Inspired Cooking: Vegetarian Specialties.”
