Copying Recipes?

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I've mentioned the activities of a certain lady cookery writer whose middle name should be "Plagiarise", elsewhere on DC, and I have seen several British and American chefs on television and in print, claiming to have invented the method of cooking a whole salmon to serve cold which has passed down our family from my Great Grandmother, who was born in the 1860s, and which first appeared in print in the 1700s. The first case doesn't seem to bother anyone and in the second case both Meg Dodds, who wrote the 18thC book, and my GGM are not in a position to sue.
As others have mentioned, US copyright expires, so that book is in the public domain. Those chefs may have come up with the method on their own and not be aware of the previous book. However, if they knew it would be lying. ;)
 
The recipes may be hundreds of years old, but the way the instructions are written isn't. That's the part that is copyrighted, along with the descriptions.
 
So you're saying posting a pic from another source is every bit as illegal as posting a recipe or quoting information. That's what I thought. Looks like the mods would have to remove half the pictures posted here showing a wok from Amazon or the knife with the funky fruit I mentioned :wacko:
I'm in the section that thinks that if it's on the Internet it's there for the taking as long as the source is linked, be it picture or word. Like a footnote. It's just common sense. And after all you are linking it back to the source, so there is recognition.

I doubt very many original owners are pursuing this though.

It depends on the situation and common sense. If I post a picture of a knife that I like and a link to amazon where I bought it, they're not going to mind.

Anyway, perhaps not a good example legalistically, because my example is a review quoting part of the "work" (their website), so my example is legally permitted, fair use.
 
Just nit-picking here but if I quoted a recipe from Joe Bloggs' latest book, for sweet and sour earthworms with lime vinaigrette, wouldn't JB have to prove beyond doubt that it was his invention in the first place in order to bring a copyright case? Many recipes have their origins lost in the mists of time and many recipe methods involve well-known cooking techniques.

I've mentioned the activities of a certain lady cookery writer whose middle name should be "Plagiarise", elsewhere on DC, and I have seen several British and American chefs on television and in print, claiming to have invented the method of cooking a whole salmon to serve cold which has passed down our family from my Great Grandmother, who was born in the 1860s, and which first appeared in print in the 1700s. The first case doesn't seem to bother anyone and in the second case both Meg Dodds, who wrote the 18thC book, and my GGM are not in a position to sue.

If you copied his words you violated his copyright. It's the words that are copyrighted, not the recipe.

Anybody can claim they invented something. It' up to the audience to believe it or not. BTW, did I mention I invented the original recipe for buttermilk pancakes? ;)
 
Most copyrighted recipes employ well-known cooking techniques. It's not the technique that's copyrighted, it's how the author employs it with the ingredients he empoys.

Not so! It's only the words that are copyrighted. How the author employs is not copyrighted.
 
I have two booklets that I have had for years. The first one is Better Homes and Gardens Our Own Favorite RECIPES. It was published in 1978. In the intro it states: "cheese blintzes direct from the family kitchen in Brooklyn, where they have been served for forty years without the recipe's ever having been consigned to paper. There are other recipes from the kitchens of farms in Maine.

The second booklet is from The Old Farmers' Almanac and is called Colonial Cookbook. This was published in 1982. It states in several of the recipes that the recipe came from the Wampanoag Indian Tribe and a lot of them came over with the Pilgrims. One of the recipes in this booklet is called "Molasses Pie." When you read it, it is now called Pecan Pie. The only difference is this recipe used molasses and today's Pecan Pie uses Dark Karo Syrup. The directions for cooking Moose are hilarious. But I can't share it with you because it is now copyrighted. And the same for the BHG recipes. What I don't understand is some of these recipes are a couple of hundred years old. And some of them came from a tribe that at the time didn't have a written word.

How about some stuffed calves ears? The ears are from a moose calf. How do you copyright wild veggies such as Jack In The Pulpit, wild carrots, onions, etc.? The recipe tells you to dig these up, but be careful as the wild carrots and The Pulpit have poisonous parts. There are also recipes written in the Olde English with the "f" as an "s". Makes for difficult reading.

I don't understand how recipes that have never been written down and come from the inside of someone's head can be copyrighted. :angel:

It is the act of writing it down that creates the copyright. The writer is the copyright owner.
 
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