cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36143769
By MEE staff Published date: 11 September 2025 22:49 BST
Ben & Jerry’s has started a public campaign to try to separate from its parent company so it can freely speak about the war in Gaza, racial justice, and other issues. Its parent company, Magnum, has refused to sell the iconic ice cream brand.
The war between the ice-cream giants comes as Ben & Jerry’s became part of the Magnum Ice Cream company on Tuesday and Unilever prepares to spin off Magnum into a separate public company, which includes brands such as Ben & Jerry’s, Walls and Cornetto, in mid-November.
Generally speaking, recipes can’t be copyrighted (the specific wording of a written recipe might be protected, but the general idea of combining certain ingredients in a specific way can’t)
The names of the flavors, branding, etc. can be (or trademarked, or various other IP terms)
And aspects of the production process might be covered by patents and such.
And of course non-competes and such could complicate things for the actual people involved
And how you acquire those recipes can be a factor, that could rub up against non-disclosure agreements, corporate espionage laws, etc. you may need to be able to say that you came up with it on your own independent of the original recipe or pieced it together from publicly available information.
But in general, if anyone wanted to start up an ice cream company selling exact duplicates of Ben & Jerry’s flavors,they could do that as long as they called them all something different