Quote:
Originally Posted by xg4bx
to play devil's advocate, can one truly "steal" a recipe? i can understand and sympathize with the pics but how can one lay claim to a recipe?
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The instructions are copyrighted even if the concept isn't. Some recipes are better-written than others, and easier to follow. Some ingredient lists are well-arranged, in order that they're used in the recipe and tagged to indicate how they're prepared ("3 cups flour, sifted, divided into 2.5 cup and .5 cup parts") and some aren't.
Anyone could probably get away with rewriting a set of recipes -- list the ingredients a bit differently, rewrite the text--but flat-out copying is infringement.
"Saute onions, garlic, and ground beef until done" is different, for the purposes of copyright law, from "add onions to medium-heat pan with 1 tbl of oil; stir until they start to clarify; add finely-chopped garlic and continue stirring until onions start to brown; add ground beef & make sure to break up any large pieces; stir often for 3-5 minutes until all the pink is gone."
Instructions can give details on how to check doneness at each stage, or alternate cooking utensils, or mention which ingredients can be increased or decreased to taste. They can be geared for beginning cooks, with great detail (as above), or for more advanced chefs, using less-common but more exact terms and not describing the process ("make a roux of wheat flour and clarified butter").
The information of what goes into a recipe and how it's cooked is not copyrightable. The specific description is.