Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients.

Nor does it protect

other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions.
Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expressiona description,
explanation, or illustration, for examplethat accompanies a recipe or formula or to a
combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.

Only original works of authorship are protected by copyright. Original means that an author
produced a work by his or her own intellectual effort instead of copying it from an existing work.

For further information about copyright, see Circular 1, Copyright Basics. Note that if your
recipe has secret ingredients that you do not want to reveal, you may not want to submit it for
registration, because applications and deposit copies are public records.

Deposit requirements depend on whether a work has been published at the time of registration:

If the work is unpublished, one complete copy

If the work was first published in the United States on or after January 1, 1978, two
complete copies of the best edition
If the work was first published outside the United States, one complete copy of the work
as first published
If the work is a contribution to a collective work and was published after January 1, 1978,
one complete copy of the best edition of the collective work or a photocopy of the
contribution itself as it was published in the collective work

FL-122, Reviewed December 2011

OpenSource Cookbook:

This may seem like a weird post to have on a recipe sharing site, but theres been some questions
regarding some of the recipes Ive been posting and whether or not Im breaking copyright law
by including them here. For the record, recipes are exempt from copyright law, so sharing lists of
ingredients and directions is perfectly fine and has been done for hundreds of years. Straight
from the Copyright Law website:

Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds, or prescriptions are not subject
to copyright protection. However, when 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.

Copyright protects only the particular manner of an authors expression in literary, artistic, or
musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to names, titles, short phrases, ideas,
systems, or methods.
Recipes are meant to be shared, thats why they are exempt from copyright law. If someone
writes up a block of text describing the breathtaking flavor jamboree, I am not allowed to copy
that from the recipe. Likewise, people can share the recipes listed on my site, but not my
comments about the recipe (although, Im not real picky about that to be honest). The
ingredients and directions are fair game. Another reference point would be this post by
Schwimmer Legal citing a couple of cases regarding recipes, copyright law and recipe books.

One should distinguish between a recipe, a textual rendering of a recipe, and a compilation of
recipes. Publications Intl. v. Meredith, 88 F.3d 473 (7th Cir. 1996) dealt with alleged
infringement of a recipe book.

The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of each dish is a statement of
facts. There is no expressive element in each listing; in other words, the author who wrote down
the ingredients for Curried Turkey and Peanut Salad was not giving literary expression to his
individual creative labors. Instead, he was writing down an idea, namely, the ingredients
necessary to the preparation of a particular dish. [N]o author may copyright facts or ideas. The
copyright is limited to those aspects of the worktermed expressionthat display the stamp of
the authors originality. Harper & Row, 471 U.S. at 547, 105 S.Ct. at 2223. We do not view the
functional listing of ingredients as original within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

As the Supreme Court stated in Feist: Facts, whether alone or as part of a compilation, are not
original and therefore may not be copyrighted. A factual compilation is eligible for copyright if it
features an original selection or arrangement of facts, but the copyright is limited to the particular
selection or arrangement. In no event may copyrights extend to the facts themselves. Feist, 499
U.S. at 350-51, 111 S.Ct. at 1290.

So trust me on this, both Jesse and I looked into this before I started Open Source Cook a few
years ago. Plus, I will always state where I found the original recipe (if I know where it came
from). A good example of that is the Peanut Brittle recipe, which I found at Better Homes &
Garden.

Open Source Cook started out as my recipe box. I have family and friends who wanted to see a
few of my recipes and comment on the ones Ive sent in with Jesse to work. This was the easiest
way to do that. Now, a few years later, a few of my family members are also submitted recipes to
this site. Those of us who are posting recipes are sharing our experiences with everyone. Thats
all were doing.

Why am I posting this? Whats with the pedantry? Some of the recipes Ive been posting lately
have come from the Pampered Chef. They are easy and quick to make and why not share them?
I thought, if I could share a Better Homes & Garden recipe, why not a Pampered Chef one?
Then I started receiving comments/emails saying that the recipes were copyrighted by the
Pampered Chef and I would have to take them down. I couldnt see how this was possible since
wed actively looked into exactly this issue before we started the site to make sure we were in the
legal right. It turns out the Pampered Chef is (wrongly) claiming the recipes as their Intellectual
Property, despite the fact that they cant be trademarked, copy written or patented. Hence the
reason for the rant/article.
Plus, in December, I became a consultant for with a kitchen tool company, and as any techie
would do, I (for lack of a better word) synergized the two. I have recently been told that I am
in violation of their policy, which states that no one, not even I, can link to my personal website
(that I have to pay extra in order to use, no less), so Ive had to take a lot of that stuff down. Ill
still mention individual items, but I will refrain from mentioning the company as the
manufacturer. Edited to appease the mass mob: I cant say anything about the company, so if
youre interested in any of the products I mention on this site, email me at myjaxon AT gmail
DOT com.

And note- were not lawyers, this is just a common-sense reading of copyright law.

Can a Recipe Be Stolen?

By Joyce Gemperlein
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Like most teenagers, Dana Simms and 11 other members of the Tilden Woods Swim Team know
more about iPods and Google than about pea pods and kugel. So when they began soliciting
recipes for a cookbook to benefit cancer research last summer, they were startled that technology
and cooking converged.

"We all know about plagiarism, copyright and intellectual property rights issues, but we hadn't
given them a thought when it came to the cookbook," said Simms, a junior at Walter Johnson
High School in Bethesda. When a potential contributor fretted about handing over a recipe for
Toll House cookies that appears online, in many cookbooks -- and on bags of semisweet
chocolate chips -- "we did begin to worry a little," she said.

The girls knew the legal concepts from high school, and copyright and intellectual property
issues were being drummed into them because of lawsuits on downloading music into MP3
players and iPods. But here were similar issues in the kitchen.

Some friends and relatives were hesitant to contribute favorite recipes that had been culled from
cookbooks or online databases. Could they be accused of plagiarism or a violation of intellectual
property rights? What if the recipes were tweaked? Is using a smidge more mayonnaise in a
chicken salad and substituting mango chunks for peaches enough to call the recipe your own? It's
one thing to hand down a family recipe from one generation to the next, but what about offering
a not-entirely-original recipe for publication in a cookbook, even for a charitable cause?

"What this reflects is a rising awareness over the last 20 years of copyright issues . . . and the
chilling effect of copyright enforcement . . . people being intimidated out of using basic common
sense about things that would or should never generate a lawsuit," said Siva Vaidhyanathan,
author of "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens
Creativity."
It's highly unlikely, he said, that anyone would be sued for putting someone else's published
recipe -- with or without attribution -- in a charity cookbook or posting it on the Internet where it
can be disseminated to millions of cooks almost instantly. In fact, said Vaidhyanathan, an
assistant professor of culture and communications at New York University, it would be unusual
even to receive a nasty letter about it. "There isn't [big] money at stake."

U.S. copyright law addresses recipes, but what holds sway can be called either ethics or
etiquette. Cooking is not considered inventing; rather, it evolves. Copyright law specifies that
"substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions," such as a cookbook,
can be copyrighted but that a mere list of ingredients cannot receive that protection.

The ethics guidelines of the International Association of Culinary Professionals focus on giving
proper attribution to recipes that are published or taught. The association advises using the words
"adapted from," "based on" or "inspired by," depending on how much a recipe has been revised.
("Adapted from" is the phrasing favored by The Washington Post and many other newspaper
food sections, which, along with culinary instructors, enjoy "fair use" of someone's creation for
the purpose of teaching, news reporting, scholarship or research.) The only time a recipe should
be printed without attribution, the association contends, is when it has been changed so
substantially that it no longer resembles its source.

In cyberspace, however, there's some confusion about where to draw the line. Many Web sites
carry warnings about posting "copyrighted" material, but most do not define what that means in
cooking circles.

Rachel Rappaport, a Baltimore teacher, operates a blog called Coconut & Lime in which she
shares recipes she has liked. She says her understanding -- a common one -- is that if she changes
two or three ingredients in a recipe, it becomes her own and requires no attribution.

At the eGullet Society of Culinary Arts & Letters, an online site for epicures, copyright laws and
courtesies are a constant topic of discussion, said founder Steven A. Shaw, a lawyer-turned-food
writer. Shaw contends that posting a lengthy discussion of legal and ethical conduct, enforcing
detailed membership requirements and constant monitoring of content -- including recipes --
keep his site from joining what he calls "the Wild West" of online copyright violations.

For amateur cooks who participate in the Pillsbury Bake-Off, the recipes they are passing off as
their own had better be their own. Bake-Off officials perform "originality" searches on the 100
finalists, said Marlene Johnson, senior public relations manager. Contestants whose recipes do
not have at least "several significant differences" from any found in a thorough search, she says,
are disqualified.

Professional cooks who publish recipes that blatantly copy colleagues' work without attribution
are often shunned or gossiped about, but even then, lawsuits are rare.

Washington chef and cookbook author Nora Pouillon said she would not sue if she saw her
formula for, say, cherry clafoutis, on a Web site. She'd be the first to say that she based her recipe
on versions of the French specialty featuring kirsch-soaked fruit that she had seen or eaten during
her childhood in Austria.

Wonderful food, she points out, is more than a recipe. It also is the sum of a cook's experience,
eye for detail and technique, plus the quality of the ingredients.

Pouillon said she's flattered if somebody passes along one of her recipes. "It's nice to get credit,
but I really feel that a recipe is something to share," she said. On the other hand, if someone is a
terrible cook, she said, she would rather that person not tell people that the formula for yam
vichyssoise came from her.