Copyright and Cooking Recipes
The recipes on this website are under the default license for everything else, which is a non-free license. I have been somewhat careful to release my software and other downlodable projects under a different, free, license, and some day I may decide to change the default license to something more free, but I'm still not sure about it.
The reason why I haven't felt the need to release my recipes under a different license is related to the way copyright works in relation with cooking recipes: copyright covers the creative expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
Where recipes are concerned, this means that the actual procedure that transforms some ingredients in a dish is not covered by copyright; in some cases (not mine) thay may be covered by something like trade secret or some kind of patent, but otherwise you are free to follow them to prepare food for yourself, your friends, but also for the customers at your restaurant [1], as well as teach them (in your own words) to anybody, both for free and in exchange of a payment.
[1] | in the case of the recipes on this site, well, maybe the latter is not a good idea, but that's a different matter :) |
What may be covered by copyright is the expression of these procedure, textual or otherwise, but even here there is the requirement that it is a creative expression. A list of ingredients and their amounts is not creative [2], and probably not even an instructions like "mix everything. bake at 180° for 20 minutes". On the other extreme, the description in the valhalla's potatoes page with comments on forgetting about the potatoes etc. is probably covered by copyright and you can't take it as-is and sell it [3], but that doesn't prevent you from rewriting the procedure with your own words and do whatever you want with it.
[2] | at least not in the way it is usually presented: somebody can probably find a creative way to express a list of ingredients, but it will probably look quite different from the usual amount - name of the ingredient you usually see. |
[3] | but you can give it to your friends, since that's allowed by the CC-BY-NC-ND. |
So please go on using my recipes as part of the cooking culture commons, and don't let the copyright bullies have their way, but learn about your rights as a member of the public and use them as you need/want.
See also
- Recipes & Copyright Law on the Open Source Cook site.