The lawyers of course. This is America after all.

The problem with opt-out is that you confirm that a real person is reading the spam. You might not get messages from that exact source again, but you may well get on even more spam lists.

All this confusion over IP terminology...

Recipes can be copyrighted (the prose/description at least, not merely the ingredient list). To claim the kind of rights they're talking about here would require a patent. Of course, qualifying as novel and non-obvious would be difficult.

How long before they start going after Google for linking to 'blaspheming' sites.

I note that Wolfram|Alpha happily deep-links to Google Maps.

A friend of mine wrestled in high school and likes to tell the story about the toughest match he ever had. His opponent was an amputee: one arm missing. This gave him several advantages.
    - his weight class was effectively lowered
    - many moves would became ineffective against him (you can't grab an arm if it isn't there).
    - years of living with one arm had made that arm very, very strong. This combined with the weight class issue meant that his arm was generally absurdly stronger that his opponent's.
    - surprise. Most folks had no experience wrestling a one-armed opponent and were not prepared. It changed the game.

Of course, there were also disadvantages. Many moves require two arms, and his armless side was a zone he could not reach into. My friend was able to capitalize on this, attacking from the armless side. In the end, my friend won, but not easily.

All this without prosthetics even.

Do I think this guy and an unfair advantage? Well no. But it is not an easy situation to analyze.