Pie-maker Sara Lee today slapped filmmaker Spike Lee with a $90 million dollar trademark infringement suit, claiming that the director was unfairly benefiting from a positive association with the company's mouth-watering array of pies, pastries and assorted breakfast treats.

Geoffrey Stimpson, a company spokesman, said that Spike Lee's attempt to piggyback on Sara Lee's good name was doomed to failure.

"Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee, but plenty of people don't like Spike Lee," Mr. Stimpson said.

The Sara Lee spokesman said that Mr. Lee first attempted to trick the public into thinking he had some association with Sara Lee in his 1989 film "Do the Right Thing," in which the word "pie" was used no fewer than fifty times.

An official statement by Mr. Lee, however, disputed that point, arguing that the word "pie" was used as an abbreviation for "pizza pie," adding, "Sara Lee does not own the word 'pie.'"

In a terse reply, lawyers for Sara Lee responded that the company does, in fact, own the word "pie" and demanded that Mr. Lee remove the letters P, I, and E from his first name "immediately."

If Sara Lee succeeds in forbidding Mr. Lee from using the name Lee and forces him to remove the word "pie" from the name "Spike," Mr. Lee's full name would be reduced to "SK," legal experts say.

But even that abbreviated name may be off-limits to Mr. Lee, according to lawyers for the film studio DreamWorks SKG.