spamalicious wrote:
> About a year or so ago, I was doing a search for Thai recipes when I
> came across a website for an importer of Thai foodstuff - ingredients,
> cookware, etc. I looked through their extensive recipe collection and
> thought that it looked rather good, but something about the recipes rang
> familiar. I searched other links and came across the Philpotts' recipes
> (Ian and Muoi) that I had seen in various newsgroups and mailing lists
> in years past and was happy to have found them again. When reading
> through a few of them, I realized that the recipes found on the
> retailer's website that they had claimed to be their own recipes, were
> in fact those written by Ian K. Philpott - some of the recipes had the
> occasional measurement change, but the description, ingredients, and
> methods were the same, word for word (except in situations where Ian
> wrote "my wife", the retailer swapped "we" or "our").
>
> I wrote to the retailer and asked them what was up - the response I got
> was that the recipes were indeed found online, but that they took a lot
> of time in testing out each recipe, blah blah blah. But that didn't
> explain why the Philpotts' recipes were claimed as the retailer's own,
> word for word with no credit given to the Philpotts whatsoever. I also
> contacted the owner of another website who did have the Philpotts recipe
> collection, but he gave credit where credit was due and he was aware of
> the situation with the retailer, but he felt that piracy was so rampant
> that his hands were tied and he felt that there was nothing to be done.
>
> So, a recent discussion on another group recipe copyrights made me
> think about this retailer again. Maybe if enough people raised a stink
> about it, they'd either give proper credit to the Philpotts or they'd
> take the recipes down instead of trying to profit off of them. What
> would you do? Yeah, maybe I shouldn't care so much because it's not
> hurting me personally, but I knew Ian through the few mailing lists that
> we were both members of before he passed away and so in a very small
> way, I feel like his "legacy" needs to be protected, y'know?
>
> N.


Generally, the list of ingredients is not copyrightable, but the
assembly and cooking directions might be. The more detailed and wordy
the directions, the more likely it is covered by copyright.
Then, even if the individual recipes cannot be copyrighted, I think the
collection can be.

Enforcement of a copyright on a recipe is gonna be difficult. For one
thing, how would damages be assessed?
It might be best to just start a smear campaign against the thief who
republished them without giving credit to the author, and try to
pressure them into giving the credit that is due.

I know it really ****es me off to find my original recipes republished
without my permission and without any attribution, but there's not much
I can do about it.

Best regards,
Bob