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On 2009 Aug 5, at 18:17, Karina Allrich wrote:

> I think you misstate the law in your first paragraph.  It's not the
> individual recipe that's covered if it's in larger work, only the  
> larger
> work itself.  In other words someone can't reproduce your entire  
> work and
> claim it as their own, but can reproduce a recipe that appears  
> therein.
> The general rule is that recipes are not copyrightable. Please  
> clarify on
> the forum.
>

Actually, copyright reserves the right to copy, and that includes  
portions of larger works, but the question of whether there has been  
infringement turns on several questions, not the least of which is the  
substantiality of the copying.  If you were to literally copy a 2 page  
spread from even a large cookbook and put that copy in your own  
cookbook, that would look a lot more like substantial copying than  
making a new recipe with your own description and your own  
ingredients, albeit replacing some of the "original" ingredients with  
substitutes.  If you copied the text, and sold it as some sort of  
brochure leaflet, again you might be said to have copied the  
copyrighted work sufficiently to generate a reasonable case of  
infringement.  And maybe not.  Reprinting a chapter from a textbook,  
for example, would almost certainly be considered infringement, even  
though you didn't use the whole textbook.  On the other hand, copying  
a phone number from a phone book could not be considered  
infringement.  And, a phone book can be copyrighted, but it wouldn't  
cover the actual text of names and phone numbers, but rather the  
arrangement of information selected by the author.  That also means  
that others could also make phone books with the same names and  
numbers, provided they don't copy the arrangement of the other.

Another poster mentioned enforcement.  Under copyright law, a work of  
authorship is copyright as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium;  
i.e., written down.  One can put the copyright symbol, and name and  
year, and it is automatically copyrighted.  However, you can't sue  
someone for damages unless you've actually filed a copyright  
application for registration at the copyright office.

So for the original poster, if the recipe was seen in a book, it is  
likely covered by a copyright registration filed at the copyright  
office.  If it was found on a website, however, it is less likely, as  
I would guess (and it's only a guess) that few people file copyrights  
every time they put a new recipe up on their site.

Whether or not a copyright was filed, the copyright holder would  
ordinarily send a cease and desist letter to an accused infringer,  
rather than start an immediate lawsuit, to request that the allegedly  
infringing copy be taken down.  And first they'd have to consider  
whether they have a reasonable case for alleging infringement in the  
first place.

None of this goes to your other question, of course, as to proper  
etiquette.  That's why I suggest that attribution is probably the best  
course.  And getting permission certainly couldn't hurt (particularly  
if it is being taken from a book), even if it may not actually be  
necessary in many cases.

Mark

Mark J. Rosen
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*Please provide references to back up claims of a product being GF or not GF*
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