Recipe Copyrights

Tuesday, 14 February 2006

An interesting, but impractical idea--recipe copyrights. I struggle with this notion, both because I use lots of other peoples recipes to develop my own, and even just to use because they're good, but also as a cookbook author. While it is a great notion to protect your work, I just don't think it is practical. Somewhere I've read about the disconnect big name chefs have with writing cookbooks and the dining experience in their restaurant--is a meal at the restaurant, cooked by professionals, going to be impacted when a frequent patron take the book home and cobbles their way through a favorite? Or does it give them a fuller sense of all which goes into preparing a high-end meal? How does it impact the experience, and what happens if some lesser chef takes a signature dish and uses it at their place but doesn't get it right--will Gordon Ramsey's Vichyssoise cease to be signature and special and return to plain old cold, potato and leek soup?

To me, a recipe is a blueprint. It outlines what the dish should be like. There are many ways to get to the same end, and certainly the same ingredients can be applied to numerous, different dishes. While it is unfair to wholesale steal someone elses intellectual property and turn it into your own, even if you give them credit. The world of cooking is different. Recipes are built on ideas and techniques which are common ground. The ingredients, too, are common but can be varied slightly for nuance. The only real copyright-able part of a recipe then is the individual's flair and wording in the text of the recipe. Hard to control.

There are really no new dishes under the sun. Certainly new techniques are applied to old standards, but if you dig deep enough into history much of what is hot and trendy now has been tried in some form at some time. If recipes were copyrighted 85% of restaurants, at least, would have to go out of business. It would be chaos. I think a much better model should be a Creative Commons Attribution license--which is more or less what I have released my cookbook and recipes and podcast with.

One other way to view a recipe and dish is that they are more like performance art--it is the act of creation which brings the magic. Sure, anyone can gate Central Park in Orange draperies, but Christo brings the eyes of the world to Manhattan. You and I can both use the same ingredients to make a Turkey Pannini for our computer repair dudes, but attitude, timing, quality, and passion determine the final outcome no matter how exact the recipe is we are following. This is something no copyright can control or contain and what truly distiguishes great chefs and their work from the rest of us--no matter how many of their cookbooks we buy.

Inspired by a Boing Boing Article

by: ChefNeal at 02/14/06 20:13 | link | comments (3)|
food, recipes, cooking, copyright

Comments:

#1 15 February 2006 - 03:53

neal, I thought this was interesting and checked up on it - and as I thought the recipies themselves are not copyrightable under US law, but the exact description of how to do things is. That is you cannot copy the idea "mix the flour & water" but you can copyright the sentence "gently stir the flour & water, with a steady hand" ... see:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html

"Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection."

and I also think (as you say above) that you cannot reduce a professional chef to a description of how things are done. because there is art & subtlty in cooking, things are never the same, you must adapt.

there's a larger issue though about the dammage to cooking that a copyright would do - imagine, for instance if someone had copyrighted the recipe for bread dough! it's a crazy idea, but not so crazy.

You know this is why i think public domain must be battled for and defended - not just for altuistic reasons, but because built upon public domain, we see all sorts of innovations that make lives better. if we allow everything to be closed off, we will choke everythign new.

Anonymous

#2 15 February 2006 - 13:58

Some how I new you'd enter this one! I must say that I viewed the article through the eyes of Public Domain. A year ago I don't think I would have done that.

Copyrighting a book--a particular collection, assembled in a particular way--like mine with all the photos--might not be a bad thing. But the individual elements of a cookbook--the information--that should remain open to the public for sure.