Plagiarism and cookbooks

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/dining/recipe-theft-cookbook-plagiarism.html
It seems authors have little recourse if their work is glommed. Are recipes intellectual property? Is this a legal or ethical issue?

>1 mikevail:

Are recipes intellectual property? Is this a legal or ethical issue?

Both. As the article to which you have linked states, in the U.S., anyway, recipes cannot be copyrighted. But just because something is legal, doesn't make it right. That's where ethics comes in. At a minimum, proper credit should be given.

>2 lilithcat: If credit is known. So often recipes are passed around among ones acquaintances quickly, hardly writing them down, that the origin becomes lost. Also people frequently add to/take from/change recipes so that the original recipe is not there. I think that it would be extremely difficult to enforce copyright on them. That being said, of course it is proper to give credit where credit is due. Whether it is to grandma or Julia Child.

I have a recipe from my grandmother for her persimmon pudding. Through my mother, to me. Grandma never claimed she invented it. Recently I found an article about Mrs. Regan's grandmother's persimmon pudding. Low and behold it was the same one. Stuff like that is hard to trace.

My understanding is that a recipe is considered a new recipe if just a single ingredient or amount of ingredient has been changed from the original. I see it from both sides. Tinkering with a recipe to create new versions, like cheesecake being turned into pumpkin spice or Christmas versions, or just to suit the cook's own taste, is a given. But as a cookbook author myself, I'd want to be given credit or just a nod of acknowledgement when my original recipe has inspired a different version.
I think I've only heard of one person being caught out in any real way. About ten years ago there was a show on Food Network called "Dessert First" that had a recipe stealing scandal.

I was reading about entering baked goods in the Minnesota State Fair and I was surprised that they were often someone else's recipe. I thought they had to be an original.

The first year I entered my state fair, back in 2008, they had a rule that it had to be an original recipe, and even said that the entry had to be accompanied by the written recipe. That rule vanished quickly.

>4 mstrust: I tell people who post recipes, to give credit to where they found it unless they created the whole thing. Especially when they are posting the whole recipe with original photos.

Everyone, I'm inspired by vegetarian cookbook authors like Deborah Madison, the many authors at the Moosewood Collective, macrobiotic classic cookbooks like The New Zen Cookery, all of whom state they got permission from other (named) cookbook authors to use (or often adapt) some recipes from those other authors. Getting permission from the author to include their recipe is the way to go.

I always give credit, if known. But for example, a certain recipe was given to me by Linda, Linda got it from a co-worker, the co-worker said she had no idea where it came from. Googling did not locate the recipe. So in my cookbook, I just give my friend Linda credit, and list: Recipe courtesy of Linda Smith, et al.