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Intellectual Property Issues Related to Recipes
The recipes included on this Wiki derive from various sources, ranging from my imagination, through family traditions to cookbooks and Web sites. I am not a lawyer. My understanding of intellectual property law as it relates to recipes comes from a reading of the article Intellectual Property Protection for Recipes on the Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP Web site. Basically, it seems that anyone can legally copy a published recipe for any reason so long as they remove or rewrite any "... accompan[ying] ... substantial literary expression", which I take to mean embellishments over and above the expected list of ingredients, step-by-step instructions, etc. So, this is the minimum that I have done. In most cases, I have altered the recipe to make it, in my opinion, better or easier. I have also identified the original source and included, where practical, a link to it so that readers can cut me out of the picture. It is not my intent to steal anything from anyone, just to share easy ways to make good food at home.
With the above said, I need to make two important points:
- If you make use of these recipes in any way, from cooking them for your family to re-publishing them either verbatim or modified, then you, not I, are responsible for the legal and ethical implications of your actions.
- I hereby release all intellectual property rights that I might hold with regard to these recipes. As far as I'm concerned, you can do anything you want with them. This, of course, does not change the rights of the original authors.
Interested in details from the Bradley article? Read on! (This is all my interpretation and, once again, I am not a lawyer.)
- It is extremely rare for recipes to qualify for patent protection due to their lack of novelty and reliance on prior art.
- The name or distinctive form of a product resulting from the execution of a recipe can have protection under intellectual property law as a trademark, which may need to be registered to have the full effect. However, this offers no protection for the recipe itself, just what the result can be called.
- Recipes can have protection under intellectual property law as trade secrets, but not if you let other people see them without a non-disclosure agreement. So, you lose this avenue if you publish in a book or on a Web site. The best example of a trade secret recipe is the formula for Coca-Cola®.
- That leaves just copyright. However, copyright protects only an original expression of an idea. It does not protect the idea itself, not can it be used to assert intellectual property rights over facts, procedures or processes. A recipe that consists of a list of ingredients (facts) and instructions for what to do with them (procedures and processes) is not eligible for copyright protection. All that can be protected is commentary on how wonderful the recipe is, how it achieves its results, how interesting its history is, and so on. Once these are removed, the important part is available to everyone.
