Can A Recipe Be Copyrighted?

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Permalink Reply by Christine White - Scandle LLC on August 5, 2009 at 4:36pm

Thanks for this helpful information! I researched this back when I started my business and it can get confusing when you don't understand all the terminology.

Warm Regards,
Christine White-Stanton
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Scandle, LLC "A Candle Never Felt So Good"
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Permalink Reply by IBN Member - Tyrika Swails - mainelement: love on August 5, 2009 at 9:07pm

dM,

Thank you so much for this article. I was just had a discussion on this subject with a client of mine yesterday and this just reiterates and reconfirms what I was explaining to her.

Love and blessings,
Tyrika

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Permalink Reply by Luanda Diaz-Santiago on August 5, 2009 at 10:38pm

This is definitely helpful! Thanks so much!

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Permalink Reply by Toni Parker on August 5, 2009 at 11:13pm

Great information that I never knew I needed :)

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Permalink Reply by Lori Nova Endres on August 7, 2009 at 5:26pm

I remember this was a hot topic at the Business Boot Camp you did at The Nova Studio last year.

It was relieved to know that although my fabulous recipes are not copyright-able by themselves, they are protected by law within my detailed class handouts which contain "substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions."

Thanks for making this clear to everyone!

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Permalink Reply by Robert Goodman on July 30, 2010 at 2:23pm

Sorry, but dM's info here isn't quite right.

You can't copyright information, period. You can copyright its expression, so that if you had a particularly entertaining, etc. way of writing a recipe, its exact text and close paraphrases could be protected the same way ordinary poetry, etc. would be. But useful information is specifically not supposed to be protected by copyright, so that if it ever came to an infringement suit over a paraphrasing of a recipe, the fact that there are only so many ways to convey the same info would be taken into acc't by the court, so that closer copying would be allowed of it than of ordinary literary works. The photos of you would be copyrightable because they're inessential to the information, but if it were important to explain the process to include a diagram, then the substance of the diagram would not be copyrightable.

There are two ways to protect the substance of a recipe (including ingredients and methods): as a trade secret (which of course must be just that, secret) and by a utility patent. The reference to "literary expression" is meant to cover basically the entertainment value of a cookbook.

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Permalink Reply by Sharon Hackney on September 22, 2011 at 8:03pm

dM,

What about the way a product is delivered?  For example if I take a simple oil serum formulation and use it in a non-conventional way of applying it to the skin.

Thanks!

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