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.
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.
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)
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.
If you are able to get a hold of the recipe, you could duplicate it without retribution.
Well, aside from it being illegal for any entity except Coke to handle one of the ingredients.
And what ingredient is that? 👀
Coca leaves. They’re de-coked prior to use, but they’re still a controlled substance. Coke has an exception built into the law that effectively makes them the only country in the US that can access them (possibly outside of medical, I’m not really sure and don’t care to check). There’s not a lot in the drink anymore as it is, just enough to keep the name.
Coke has an exception built into the law that effectively makes them the only country in the US that can access them
TIL Coca-Cola is a country in the US.
The coke
You put the lime in the coke, YOU NUT!!!
And shake it all up.
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
