Gastronomy612′s Weblog

A few weeks ago my mom questioned whether or not I could get in trouble for posting recipes on this blog.  Being that I cite where I get recipes from to the point of linking to them, I thought nothing more of it as i (naively) considered it much like citing quotes and sources in any academic piece of work.  Not so.

I was perusing the various food blogs through Blogher, and came across just such an issue involving a woman, a blog and potato salad recipe.  Here’s the condensed version:

• Woman makes potato salad based on a “copyrighted” recipe.
• Woman alters recipe to her liking, posts recipe, posts results.
• Evil Company contacts her via email, “Take down our recipe. Wah!”
• Woman, in a hurry dismisses further considerations and says she will when she gets to work and does.
• After doing so, Woman thinks more and she and Evil Company get into an email war.
• Evil Company patronizes her, by telling her she “must be having a bad day..

I should stop there, because you should read the actual email exchange as it is quite entertaining and interesting.

The woman eventually finds out the legalities of posting copy written material, only to find out that recipes, can’t really be copyrighted.  A list of ingredients, cannot be copyrighted.  Furthermore, no one can copyright “how to boil water”, or “turn on an oven to a specific heat” unless they do so with literary prose.

Here’s the actual law from the U.S. Copyright Office re recipes.