On Wednesday, a blogger in Southern California wrote the most epic response to a pasta-related legal demand letter that we have ever seen.

The blogger in question, Vincent "Vino" Malone, is the proprietor of AllOfGarden.com, a website that chronicles a quest to eat as much Olive Garden pasta as possible (via the Never Ending Pasta Pass).

Malone documents his travails online with detailed photos, often in brief form, such as: "My mind has actually come around completely on the garlic alfredo sauce since its original launch in 2015. Perhaps the recipe has changed, or maybe my palate has been deadened by years of conspicuous consumption, but the flavor is actually fairly mild and the grated cheese adds a bit of depth to the traditionally bland alfredo."

One day earlier, Malone received an e-mail from brandenforcements@mm-darden.com, which claims that "the trademark 'Olive Garden' appears as a metatag, keyword, visible or hidden text on the website(s) located at the below listed URL(s) without having obtained prior written authorization from Darden Corporation," the company behind the chain of Olive Garden restaurants.

The company demanded that Malone remove "all metatags, keywords, visible or hidden texts including trademark(s) presently appearing on the above-cited website(s)."

It's not clear why simply mentioning "Olive Garden" on a website would constitute a trademark violation, given the legal doctrine of "nominative fair use," the trademark equivalent of fair use in copyright. That's the notion that simply using a trademarked name to describe that thing does not constitute a trademark violation. (This concept is best captured in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the 1992 case New Kids on the Block v. News Am. Pub., Inc. In that instance, the court described a "classic fair use case where the defendant has used the plaintiff's mark to describe the defendant's own product.")

"I would think that in this case—a non-commercial site reviewing Olive Garden pasta—the claim of infringement is very, very weak," Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who recently helped a design blog with a similar issue, told Ars. "As to the wisdom of visiting Olive Garden multiple times for the purposes of consuming food, I have no comment."

However, the message from brandenforcements@mm-darden.com may not have been sent by an actual human: Darden's e-mail probably was sent out by some sort of automated system, as Above the Law suggests.

Still, Malone, after consulting with the /r/legaladvice subreddit, penned this missive, which we have reprinted here in full. No one from Olive Garden or Darden has responded to Ars' request for comment.