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This is super interesting to me, and was not something I knew about before. This is probably a naive train of thought, but can recipes be patented? It would be

This is super interesting to me, and was not something I knew about before. This is probably a naive train of thought, but can recipes be patented? It would be very interesting if not. Because in my mind a recipe patent would be very similar to a software patent. It's describing a way to put code together to produce a desired outcome.

vanniv 7y ago
I'm not an IP lawyer, I just play one on the interwebz, so don't pretend like this is legal advice, but: Yes, technically, you could patent a recipe, provided that it was sufficiently novel and sufficiently non-obvious to a practitioner of ordinary skill in the art. An ordinary recipe that only takes well-known ingredients and combines them in well-understood ways, applying well-known techniques is going to have a difficult time passing either the novelty or non-obviousness tests. I would anticipate that, if your recipe-based patent application were to prevail, that your recipe would need to include some preparation steps that are themselves new and unusual. For example, if you described a novel method of processing an ingredient, or a novel way of combining two ingredients that relied on some previously-unexplored aspect of their chemistry (such as making use of the small ash content of coconut milk products, for example)
- hedora 7y ago
  Taco Bell succesfully patented the hexagonal tortilla folding pattern they use for Crunch Wrap Supremes.
  - vanniv 7y ago
    That's fascinating. Was that a design or utility patent? Oh dear me, it was a utility patent. They spent years trying to get it approved and ultimately abandoned the application (presumably realizing they were never going to get it) Application #US20080020106A1
yosamino 7y ago
Funnily enough, because of this similarity the un-patentability of a cooking recipe was a frequently used example to hightlight the absurdity of patenting software in the campaign against software patents in Europe.

vanniv 7y ago

I'm not an IP lawyer, I just play one on the interwebz, so don't pretend like this is legal advice, but: Yes, technically, you could patent a recipe, provided that it was sufficiently novel and sufficiently non-obvious to a practitioner of ordinary skill in the art. An ordinary recipe that only takes well-known ingredients and combines them in well-understood ways, applying well-known techniques is going to have a difficult time passing either the novelty or non-obviousness tests. I would anticipate that, if your recipe-based patent application were to prevail, that your recipe would need to include some preparation steps that are themselves new and unusual. For example, if you described a novel method of processing an ingredient, or a novel way of combining two ingredients that relied on some previously-unexplored aspect of their chemistry (such as making use of the small ash content of coconut milk products, for example)

hedora 7y ago
Taco Bell succesfully patented the hexagonal tortilla folding pattern they use for Crunch Wrap Supremes.
- vanniv 7y ago
  That's fascinating. Was that a design or utility patent? Oh dear me, it was a utility patent. They spent years trying to get it approved and ultimately abandoned the application (presumably realizing they were never going to get it) Application #US20080020106A1

yosamino 7y ago

Funnily enough, because of this similarity the un-patentability of a cooking recipe was a frequently used example to hightlight the absurdity of patenting software in the campaign against software patents in Europe.