“When you feel like your stories, your work, your investment ends up benefiting people who are already higher up in the hierarchy of fame, it tempts me to go to a place I don’t want to go, which is to hoard knowledge,” said Leela Punyaratabandhu, who has written three Southeast Asian cookbooks. While the technology and music industries have pushed successfully to change copyright law in their fields, “there is not a big powerful lobby to push anything through for individual recipes,” she said.Īs a result, some cookbook authors feel less willing to publish their treasured recipes. Written recipes are a relatively new invention many cultures passed down culinary traditions orally. When the nation’s copyright law was first codified in 1790, cooking was seen as a woman’s domestic responsibility rather than as a professional activity, Ms. If the instructions are written with enough literary flourish, she said, they may be sufficiently creative to be copyrightable. The introductions, photography and design that accompany a recipe can be covered by a copyright, as can the cookbook as a whole, or a specific sequence of recipes, said Sara Hawkins, a business and intellectual property lawyer in Phoenix. The law views a recipe merely as a factual list of ingredients and basic steps rather than as creative expression. “It has become so tempting in this environment to just take rather than to create,” he said. Bailey said many cookbook authors are used to the free exchange of ideas on social media, and may not be conscious of the importance of giving credit.

“It is easier to find stuff to plagiarize, it is easier to plagiarize and it is easier to publish whatever you plagiarize.” Whatever the merits of those cases, Jonathan Bailey, a copyright expert in New Orleans, said the internet and self-publishing on platforms like Amazon have made borrowing more common.

Seinfeld’s cookbook “ Deceptively Delicious,” about hiding healthful ingredients in children’s meals, stole the concept of her cookbook “ The Sneaky Chef.” A court ruled that Ms.

Twelve years later, Missy Chase Lapine sued Jessica Seinfeld, claiming that Ms. In a 1996 lawsuit, Meredith Corporation accused Publications International Ltd., of publishing recipes from its cookbook “Discover Dannon: 50 Fabulous Recipes With Yogurt.” A court ruled that recipes and instructions were not covered by copyright law. As recipe development became a full-time profession in recent decades, authors started getting litigious about perceived plagiarism.

Jubilee cookbook