The owners of a new restaurant coming to Palo Alto are headed to court and involved in a bitter war over trade secrets.
In a lawsuit first reported in the Mercury News, restaurant group Teleferic Barcelona is accusing a husband and wife who worked for the company for years of stealing paella recipes and customer client information on their way out to launch their own restaurant, the Macarena.
"Because recipes in general are very similar and chefs do tend to copy other chefs, that's a different situation than actually downloading proprietary information of a financial nature," legal analyst Steven Clark said.
The Macarena restaurant is scheduled to open next month close to a Teleferic location.
Clark said the Macarena owners will have a fight on their hands since the lawsuit also accuses them of violating confidentiality agreements.
The Macarena owners declined to comment, except to say they are addressing the lawsuit privately.
An attorney for Teleferic also declined to comment, but did say there has yet to be a set court date.
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