Selling recipe to winery

Salut/Hi Hans,

le/on 16 Aug 2004 11:30:20 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

I'd expect it to be virtually impossible. A recipe as such cannot be copyrighted, the only thing that CAN be protected is the form of words used to describe it. But it is pretty well established that no copyright exists on the ingredients, or their quantity or the method used to prepare them.

Exactly, you cannot patent or copyright a recipe, nor can you protect it with an appellation of origin.

This allows great chefs to pirate their colleagues' recipes. We have recently heard of one of France's top 3-star chefs, considered by many (including himself) as the world's top, having published two recipes by Fulvio Pierangelini (Gambero Rosso, San Vincenzo)) and one by Reine Sammut (La Feniere, Lourmarin) as his own.

The problem, I suspect, is that any change in the recipe makes it into a new one. Just how big a change? Undefined...

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

I believe that Jess Jackson took his former wine maker to court over his recipe for Chardonnay about 8 years back. I don't remember the outcome of that exercise. How about you Bob Foster?