According to the code of ethics of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, a culinary professional must not knowingly “appropriate […] any recipe or other intellectual property belonging to another without the proper recognition.” And, in addition to the ethical, there are legal issues. While copying culinary creations might not sound like a big deal to millennial food bloggers and vloggers, lawsuits—sometimes with high stakes—have been filed over (mis)appropriated recipes. But whether claims to a signature dish will hold up in court is a different question and will likely depend on the scope of protection of the applicable copyright law(s).
Continue Reading Your IP Valentine: Can Recipes Be Protected by Copyright?

Taking pictures of food and sharing them online through social media has become a new cultural phenomenon. The trend has become so popular that entire blogs and YouTube channels are now devoted to food photography. A recently published article in the German Daily Newspaper Die Welt has, however, spawned some debate whether taking a picture of an elaborately arranged dish and posting it online might be illegal in the sense that it infringes copyright. According to a lawyer cited in that article, food arrangements are, in principle, copyrightble. If this was in fact the case, posting food images to social media without permission could constitute an unauthorized derivative use of a copyrighted work.
Continue Reading Food Plating and Copyright – Can Instagramming Your Meal Be Construed as Copyright Infringement?