NYC PIZZA WARS: I WILL SLICE YOU!

WHEN the co-owner of the famed Brooklyn pizzeria L&B Spumoni Gardens was shot dead in his own back yard last month, cops suspected it was a robbery gone awry. Victim Louis Barbati was hit by at least five bullets while holding a loaf of Italian bread and $15,000 in cash.

But the still-unsolved mystery dredged up the pizzeria’s mob-linked past. Colombo crime-family associate Frank Guerra, who is related by a marriage to a Spumoni co-owner, was accused of extorting a Staten Island pizzeria owner for allegedly stealing their pie recipe.

The saga is just one slice of the city’s long history of the Big Apple’s pizza-related feuds, which include colorful trademark disputes, knife fights on quiet Brooklyn streets and back-stabbing family members.

JOE’S PIZZA VS. JOE’S PIZZA

Manhattan lawyer Maria Savio isn’t used to carrying pizza boxes into courtrooms.

But she did just that while representing Famous Joe’s Pizza, a beloved Greenwich Village institution founded by Pino “Joe” Pozzuoli in 1975.

“The court officers would say, ‘Oh, is there pizza from Joe’s in those boxes?’ ” Savio recalled with a laugh. “It was a good case.”

Those boxes proved to be important pieces of evidence: They showed that Pozzuoli’s former son-in-law, Giuseppe Vitale, tried to pass off his own pie shops in Brooklyn and California as outposts of the Village store, Savio said.

Vitale stamped the boxes with an address for Pozzuoli’s shop, which is now at 7 Carmine St. but originally was on the corner of Carmine and Bleecker streets. The former son-in-law also called his solo venture Joe’s Pizza of Bleecker Street — despite having opened his own stores without his father-inlaw’s blessing. “It’s always the inside jobs that hurt the most,” Savio said.

The deception started long before Vitale launched his independent pizza-making career, when he was still learning the ropes in Pozzuoli’s shop, where he started working in 1984, according to Savio.

“Customers would come in, and he would say, ‘I’m Joe,’ ” Savio explained. “His name was Giuseppe, Italian for Joe.”

Years later, and after unsuccessfully asking Pozzuoli to give him a share of the restaurant, Vitale secretly opened two pizza parlors in Brooklyn — and called them Joe’s Pizza. But he didn’t stop with the Big Apple.

“The s--t hit the fan when he went to California and opened a pizzeria out there and started promoting it as the West Coast branch of Joe’s Pizza,” Savio said.

That’s when Pozzuoli learned that Vitale was making money off the founder’s brand — referencing his Carmine Street business in promotional materials and securing trademarks for “Joe’s Pizza” and “Joe’s Pizza of Bleecker Street.” Vitale’s Los Angeles-area pie shops were even decorated with photos that the younger man had taken with celebrities while working inside the West Village store.

“People assumed he was the real Joe,” Savio said.

“Heidi Klum did a spoof program on YouTube where she was at Joe’s Pizza pretending to be a pizza girl selling pizza pies,” Savio recalled. “When she did that, I’m sure she thought she was doing this for the real Joe’s Pizza. Little did she know this was Vitale’s pizzeria.”

Pozzuoli sued in 2010 and eventually won an injunction that forced Vitale to clarify that his store wasn’t related to the popular West Village shop.

Today, Vitale’s Web site bears the disclaimer, “Joe’s Pizza on Hollywood and Joe’s Pizza on Sunset are not affiliated with Famous Joe’s Pizza, Inc. DBA Joe’s Pizza at 7 Carmine Street, NY.”

Savio, who is Italian, chalked up Vitale’s alleged deception to his Sicilian heritage, saying he really didn’t mean to harm anyone.

“I understand his Sicilian mentality,” she explained. “He felt like he was justified. In his mind, he’s thinking, ‘I’m only promoting your name by expanding to California. What am I doing wrong here, I’m a family member, without appreciating that he was essentially usurping the long-established rights of this pizzeria.”

Vitale could not be reached for comment.

PIZZA MASTER VS. THE MOBSTER

Chef Mark Iacono is most famous for his thin-crust pizza, which he makes in a woodburning oven at Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn eatery Lucali.

Beyoncé and Jay Z are big fans. So are the editors of GQ magazine, which once lauded it as the second-best pizza in the country.

But five years ago, Iacono made headlines for something a little less savory: attemptedmurder charges stemming from a knife fight with a childhood pal. It was a classic scene out of Brooklyn’s violent past — starting after the pizza master got into an intense argument with ex-con Battista “Benny” Geritano inside Joe’s Superette, a Smith Street deli famous for its deep-fried prosciutto balls.

The fight spilled out onto the sidewalk, at which point Geritano, a local bagel maker, whipped out a blade and sliced Iacono.

The restaurateur pulled out his own knife and fought back before Geritano was whisked away from the neighborhood by his girlfriend, Annette Angeloni.

Iacono (inset top) was left bleeding on the sidewalk after the street battle, suffering wounds to his throat, back and legs. Both men were slapped with attempted-murder charges, which were later dropped after they refused to cooperate with police.

Rumors swirled in the wake of the fight. Was it about Geritano’s girlfriend? Was the mob involved?

Geritano (inset bottom), a reputed associate of the Genovese crime family, allegedly told cops the dispute was over a debt Iacono failed to pay. Iacono has denied that the mob or a woman was at the center of the altercation but hasn’t offered an explanation for why his pal’s blood boiled over.

“I’m still trying to figure that one out,” Iacono quipped when asked about it this week. “I really can’t comment.

“I choose to let sleeping dogs lie,” he added. “I’m sorry.”

Geritano is currently in prison on unrelated assault charges.

Meanwhile, Iacono’s eatery is still attracting long lines and A-listers. As for his injuries, Iacono simply said: “I’m managing.”

PATSY’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT VS. PATSY’S PIZZERIA

It’s a dispute that’s simmered like pasta sauce for more than a decade — and prompted heated debates, including over which joint Ol’ Blue Eyes really liked better.

“The judge asked, ‘Why don’t you two just live in peace?’ But it just doesn’t seem to happen,” said Norman Zivin, who represents Patsy’s Italian Restaurant.

The eateries’ battle goes all the way back to 1999, when Patsy’s Italian Restaurant, which opened on West 56th Street in Manhattan in 1944, sued Patsy’s Pizzeria in Harlem for selling a rival pasta sauce under the Patsy’s name using a very similar label, according to court papers.

“It created a lot of confusion,” Zivin said.

There was even more confusion over which establishment Frank Sinatra had the most allegiance to, with both sides

claiming him as their own patron saint in court. The singer’s children, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Nancy Sinatra Lambert, submitted testimonials saying their dad was a regular at the Italian restaurant — not the pizzeria. “I know he loved to eat, and I’m sure he went to a lot of places in the city like any New Yorker, but the relationship we had together was much more . . . He was more than a customer; he was family,” Patsy’s Italian Restaurant co-owner Sal Scognamillo told The Post. The dispute took a particularly contentious turn when the pizzeria’s owner, Frank Brija, attempted to show that his eatery had been making jarred pasta sauce longer than the restaurant. He submitted an invoice from 1994 to the court as proof — but Zivin pointed out that one of them had the area code 973 on it, which didn’t exist until 1997. Brija brushed it off as a mistake, but a Manhattan federal court judge ruled against him, saying the pizzeria couldn’t sell the pasta sauces and ordering it to pay $500,000 for contempt of court and legal fees. But the legal battle — and arguments over who could claim Sinatra as a customer — didn’t end there. In about 2006, Brija began franchising the Patsy’s name to restaurants in suburban areas, including Long Island. The Midtown Patsy’s sued the pizzeria in Syosset for trademark infringement, again claiming their use of the name “caused confusion” for customers. At trial, Patsy’s Pizzeria pulled out a recording of Sinatra from a 1976 concert in which he calls the pizza at their joint “the greatest in the world.” A judge ultimately decided that the Long Island Patsy’s should post a sign saying it wasn’t affiliated with the Italian restaurant — but also ruled that neither establishment could call themselves Pasty’s alone. The saga is still playing out in an appeals court — and the pizzeria’s lawyer, Paul Grandinetti, is trying to federally register a “Patsy’s Pizzeria” trademark but has faced opposition from the restaurant, he said. “Hopefully, we can come to some kind of resolution,” Brija said, adding that he has big expansion plans for his brand. “I feel like we are little kids going back and forth to court.” PIZZA KING VS. 2 BROS. PIZZA When Pizza King owner Mohit Mitra (above) slashed the price of his cheese slices to a stunningly low 75 cents, it was a matter of survival.

It was the kind of call made only in the midst of a life-or-death pizza war, and even today, four years later, it’s a decision he’s still grappling with — and regretting.

It all started in 2012, when Pizza King, then-called Bombay Fast Food/6 Ave. Pizza, was selling its slices for $1.50.

That is, until 2 Bros. Pizza moved in on the same stretch of West 38th Street in Manhattan. “[It] was going to kill my business,” Mitra recently recalled. “We were losing business. I was worrying about it.”

Mitra now claims not to remember who slashed their prices first, but video surveillance showed that his shop led the charge, lowering the price of a slice to 79 cents, according to New York Eater. His rival, 2 Bros., countered by cutting the cost of their slice to 75 cents. “He was losing money,” Mitra said. “I was losing, also.”

But 2 Bros. buckled first, eventually closing up shop at that location, a move that made Mitra “very happy,” he said.

The slice slinger raised his prices back up to $1.50, which Mitra says allows him to make a higher quality pizza.

But hungry people still wander into his store — and are dismayed to find his slices cost over $1.

Still, even with the price hike, he said, he’s not making enough money because his rent is so high.

“It’s hand to mouth,” he said. “We lost a lot of money [from cutting prices]. It’s very difficult to recover.”

“It killed us — and it killed him,” Mitra said of 2 Bros.

He added that he’s still friendly with the 2 Bros. owner Oren Halali, who stops by sometimes to say hello.

“It’s a business matter,” Mitra said with a smile. RAY’S VS. RAY’S VS. RAY’S So, who’s Ray? That’s the question Greg Esposito asked himself after buying a couple of Original Ray’s pizzerias in the early ’80s.

Then “I did a search, and I came up with the Ray,” he told The Post.

“Ray” is actually Ralph “Raffie” Cuomo, a Luchese crime-family mobster who opened Ray’s Pizza on Prince Street in Manhattan in 1959.

This was before there was a Famous Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s, World-Famous Original Ray’s Pizza and, of course, Not Ray’s Pizza out in Brooklyn.

“I came up with the original gentleman, did a stock deal with cash and purchased the trademark rights to the name,” Esposito said.

“Anybody who used it I would litigate,” he said.

After joining forces with Cuomo, who has since died, the pizza entrepreneur started an Original Ray’s franchise and tried to register for a federal trademark in 1984 — but ran into opposition from another Ray.

This Ray was Rosalino Mangano, who operates a slew of Famous Original Ray’s Pizza stores around the city.

So began 7 ¹ /2 years of litigation that culminated with the Mangano family teaming up with Esposito and Cuomo in business.

Esposito eventually got out of the Ray’s business and founded the Joe DiMaggio Italian Chophouse chain out west.

But the Mangano family is still fighting the good fight when it comes to the precious name, protecting their trademark from pizza-name pilferers.

In 2011, they sued the owners of the iconic Famous Ray’s Pizza at Sixth Avenue and West 11th Street for false advertising and unfair competition and moved into the same space, confusing locals who weren’t entirely sure where their pizza was coming from.

“Over the years, we have systematically taken steps to stop infringers from using our trademarks,” reads a Facebook post the Mangano family blasted out in 2011.

“We have an important message for all infringers of the Ray’s Pizza trademarks: WE WILL STOP YOU. If you want to avoid litigation and the payment of damages STOP NOW.”

For the record, Rosalino Mangano still insists he’s the original Ray’s.

“It’s my name, and I made the name,” he told The Post. “I’ve been in the pizza business all my life almost.”