On Saturday, November 25, 2000, Peter Hirtle <[email protected]> wrote: > Recipes cannot be copyrighted, but that doesn't prevent > authors from compiling cookbooks - and it doesn't stop others from taking > those recipes and using them in new cookbooks. I can understand this statement if you are talking about a traditional ("public domain") recipe. But since a recipe is often a non-obvious selection of items and a set of instructions on how to combine them, why wouldn't a new, original recipe be copyrighted? It can involve a great deal of creativity to develop one. S R C A cott obert ranston nderson [email protected]

At 05:19 PM 11/25/00 -0500, Scott Anderson wrote: >On Saturday, November 25, 2000, Peter Hirtle <[email protected]> wrote: > > Recipes cannot be copyrighted, but that doesn't prevent > > authors from compiling cookbooks - and it doesn't stop others from taking > > those recipes and using them in new cookbooks. > >I can understand this statement if you are talking about a traditional >("public domain") recipe. But since a recipe is often a non-obvious >selection of items and a set of instructions on how to combine them, why >wouldn't a new, original recipe be copyrighted? It can involve a great >deal of creativity to develop one. It does seem counter-intuitive, doesn't it? But then most copyright law seems counter-intuitive to me... Copyright only protects original expression, not ideas. The Copyright Office flyer on this states: "Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection" <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fls/fl122.pdf>. If I were to paraphrase this for genealogists, I might say "Mere listings of people and their vital statistics as found in census and vital records are not subject to copyright protection. When the listing is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or analysis, there may be a basis for copyright protection." I wonder if the Copyright Office would agree with me? Peter Hirtle [email protected]