EEKLO, Belgium

WHAT happens when you take a classic cookie, give it the reality-TV treatment and market the result worldwide?

When Belgians did that, the results included a sugary, faintly cinnamon-flavored paste, two lawsuits and a debate over who should own the rights to a product tied to the traditions of rural Flanders.

The conflict began more than three years ago when a woman won a television contest for inventions with a spread made from speculoos, a caramelized cookie also known as biscoff or, thanks to its ubiquity on Delta Air Lines flights, the airline cookie.

One Belgian speculoos producer, Lotus Bakeries, went into business with the winner, but when two other competing companies produced their own spreads, Lotus sued, claiming it had obtained a patent that gave it the exclusive right to sell the paste. Last month a court in Ghent nullified the patent in a case in which one of the competitors argued that food could not be patented.