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Yes, any creative expression in the recipe might be protected by copyright. And dish names might be protectable as trademarks, especially if they are not merel
by vanniv 7y ago
Yes, any creative expression in the recipe might be protected by copyright.
And dish names might be protectable as trademarks, especially if they are not merely descriptions of the foodstuff.
The ingredients list and preparation steps, or any other text which is purely functional and without a creative component, is what is not protectable.
Interestingly, computer code is generally copyright protected, despite being literally steps a machine follows to perform a task. Courts have ruled that, because there are so many different ways to express any software of nontrivial size, the way the code is written (including comments, variable names, organization, etc ) represents sufficient creative expression to be protected.
I'm actually somewhat surprised that binaries still get the protection, especially since with modern compiler optimizations, it seems like any creative expression your code would be gone by the time the compiler was done with it.
But hey, as I said above, law is strange
- perl4ever 7y ago"Courts have ruled that, because there are so many different ways to express any software of nontrivial size, the way the code is written (including comments, variable names, organization, etc ) represents sufficient creative expression to be protected." If I removed comments and/or translated the code in a literal manner, I'm sure it would still qualify as plagiarism in school. Are you implying that it would not or should not be a copyright violation in that case? I have no idea legally, but I would assume the worst.
- mlyle 7y agoThe answer is, it's complicated, but: > If I removed comments and/or translated the code in a literal manner, I'm sure it would still qualify as plagiarism in school. What's plagiarism and copyright violation have nothing to do with each other. Academics routinely copy large segments of text and rely on fair use exemptions to avoid breaching copyright. Meanwhile, copying a couple innocuous sentences can rise to be plagiarism when it would not be a substantive copyright violation.
- sedachv 7y ago> If I removed comments and/or translated the code in a literal manner That is copyright infringement. See SAS Institute, Inc. v. S&H Comp. Sys., 605 F. Supp. 816 (M.D. Tenn. 1985)
- taneq 7y agoThe text of a recipe is protected by copyright, just like the source code for a computer program is protected. A mechanical transformation of the recipe (say, converting it to all caps, or changing the font) will still be protected as a derivative work, just like the binaries for a computer program are protected as a derivative work. A re-phrasing of the recipe in someone else's words which results in the same dish is not protected, just like a re-implementation of a piece of software is not protected.