My wife and I have been going to a new local restaurant for a couple of months. Last night we were at the bar, our usual spot, and a guy came in with a competitors tee shirt on. The bartender struck up a conversation with the guy and I caught that the guy owns the competitor. I looked up the menu of the other place and they look pretty good. On the way back from a restroom stop I told the guy that his place looked pretty good and we'd be checking it out.

Then he told me the whole story of why he was there. He hired the owners of the place we were in to do some consulting. A few months later the new restaurant opened. He wanted to see how much they copied.

I looked up FB pages of the place we've been going and the guy's restaurant. You could literally exchange names between the two and not know which was which. So the new place had absolutely copied the established restaurant.

So, how far can a new restaurant go in copying concept, atmosphere, menu items and recipes before it's unethical.