TIL that recipes are not protected by copyright law in the USA (and likely Canada)
TIL that recipes are not protected by copyright law in the USA (and likely Canada)
References
- "Are Recipes Protected by Copyright Law?". Kiera Boyd. Fasken. The Angle. Lexology. Published: 2021-07-07. Accessed: 2024-10-31T04:50Z. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bc2cc721-99bc-47f0-be4f-727f25421201.
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In [Publications International, Ltd. v. Meredith Corp. 88 F.3d 473 (7th Cir. 1996) ], the court stated that a functional list of ingredients cannot be considered original within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
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In Lambing v. Godiva Chocolatier, 142 F. 3d 434 (6th Cir. 1998) [Lambing], the court stated plainly that recipes are not protected by copyright, completely ignoring the possibility that a recipe could contain enough expressive elements to make it copyrightable.
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Canadian courts have not yet addressed the issue of copyright in recipes [...]. Under Canadian copyright law, facts, formulas, and ideas are not protected by copyright. This means that just like in the U.S., recipes which only list ingredients (facts) and the steps that one takes to complete the recipe (formulas) are likely not protected by copyright in Canada.
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Based on current Canadian copyright law and the leading caselaw on the subject in the U.S., a list of ingredients or matter-of-fact instructions regarding the process of creating a recipe is unlikely to be protected by copyright law.
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- keepitquickk. "Is it unethical to use online recipes for my restaurant? Am I stealing someone’s work?". r/NoStupidQuestions. Reddit. Published: 2021-11-16T16:00:59.196Z. Accessed: 2024-10-31T04:58Z. https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/qvb0gy/comment/hkv7xg6/.
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[...] you can't copyright a recipe [...]
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Stories are, though, which is why recipes have long, rambling introductions about the author’s grandmother’s childhood in a small village in Sicily or whatever.
Also for SEO when they are online.
Yep. This is why online recipe sites put a whole goddamn personal essay before the actual recipe: if someone scrapes the page and copies it, they'll scrape the (copyrightable) essay as well as the (non-copyrightable) recipe.
I'm pretty sure they do it to pad out the content so 87 ads will fit, but the scrape theory's cute too.
Also to increase the length of time you are on the page. Dwell time factors into SEO. It's really an all of the above thing though.
Wait so does that mean I can legally steal the coca cola recipe?
This is why some things are trade secrets rather then trademarked.
Only very few people in the world know the coca cola recipe. Legally your free to recreate it and sell. Good luck though knowing that the company has an exclusive contract to process cocaïne leaves into flavoring extract. (The narcotic byproduct sold to phrama)
Coca leaves. Cocaine is the concentrated and processed stimulant drug.
Coca leaves are also a stimulant, but at a fraction of the strength.
That said, you are correct, Coca-Cola denatures them anyway, so the only stimulant part comes from the caffeine. It's a bit silly. You'd have to drink a supermarket aisle's worth of Coca-Cola to get the equivalent of a line of cocaine.
Coca leaves are also legal in parts of South America, where it originates, even though cocaine is not. Coca has deep cultural roots and also has practical value. Along with its stimulant properties, it helps with altitude sickness in the Andes.
I've had mate de coca- coca tea. It's traditionally either chewed or made into tea. I was able to get it imported from a website that no longer exists and I'm guessing I know why. Anyway, aside from the taste (vaguely like damp straw), it was pretty great. Kept you more awake than coffee without any jittery feelings and was completely gone within a few hours.
(Apologies for rambling.)
One version of the recipe was accidentally leaked a while back. It's not the exact formulation they sell today, but apparently it's damn close.
If you can do so without some other crime such as breaking and entering, sure. If you can buy a bottle of coke off the shelf and then reverse engineer its formula, there's not much they can legally do about that.
It depends a bit on what you mean by "stealing"
If you were to break into the coke vault, hack into their computers, threaten or blackmail a coke executive, etc. in order to obtain it, those would all be illegal acts on their own.
But if you reverse-engineered the recipe yourself, or just happened to come across it in some legal fashion you could do pretty much whatever you want with it- publish the recipe, make your own cola and sell it (can't call it "coca-cola" or "Coke" though because of trademarks and such,) try to sell the recipe to one of Coke's competitors, etc.
Anyone with the recipe is going to have a hell of a time trying to do anything with it though because one of the ingredients is allegedly still coca leaf extract and coke is pretty much the only entity that is allowed to do anything with the stuff.
...one of the ingredients is allegedly still coca leaf extract and coke is pretty much the only entity that is allowed to do anything with that stuff.
Easy. CIA-sponsored Coke competitor. Profits may or may not fund anti communist rebels in South America.
Why do you think Pepsi, Coke, and RC cola have a similar taste profile?
I don't, other than that they're all acidic
Probably not literally steal it, but if you found a copy of it, or managed to make one, noþing would be stopping you from just bottling and selling coca cola as long as you could prove you were making it yourself.
Amazon Kindle is killing right with the cook books. Millions of them
It's crazy when you consider how many things even back in the gilded age were legislated as common sense that in the modern era are tied up in lots of trademark and copyright red tape because unlike the old thing it involves computers or an app.
Like libraries would not have become a thing if we tried to invent them in the modern era.
They're actively being combatted by the right.