[A2k] A Recipe for Intellectual Property Madness

[James Love]

http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2006/10/
a_recipe_for_in.html

October 12, 2006

A Recipe for Intellectual Property Madness
Posted by Ed Foster on October 12, 2006 10:46 AM

The next time you dine at a restaurant, you might want to check to
see if you're swallowing any fine-print legalese along with your
food. There is apparently a serious movement among chefs to start
serving intellectual property claims along with their culinary
creations. You may eat the meal, in other words, but the chef still
owns it.

Yesterday one of my readers pointed out a fascinating article in the
current issue of Food & Wine Magazine. The piece justifiably centers
on how copyright law could be applied to recipes in the future. Of
course, the expression of a recipe as published in a cookbook or
whatever has always been copyrightable, but what entreprenurial chefs
and legal-minded entrepreneurs have in mind now is to copyright the
recipe as expressed in food. The article points out the case of an
Australian chef whose cuisine was winning awards Down Under until it
was discovered he was copying the dishes right down to the details of
presentation from American restaurants. So there's some interesting
arguments on both sides, although I get a little queasy whenever
people talk copyrighting what seems like an idea.

Still, what really got my attention in the article is the experience
that Pete Wells, the author of the Food & Wine piece, had in an avant-
garde restaurant in Chicago. He was served a small, edible sheet of
cotton-candy paper, on which was printed this notice from the
restaurant's chef:

     Confidential Property of and ? H. Cantu. Patent Pending. No
further use or disclosure is permitted without prior approval of H.
Cantu..

The idea that you could restrict someone from making further use of
food after they eat it is quite remarkable in itself. The mind reels,
however, at the possibilities opened up by the bite-to-agree contract
formation being attempted by Chef Cantu and his lawyers. And why
should the restaurant biz stop at this point when they could serve up
whole platefuls of EULA-like language for diners to swallow? Forget
about returning a badly cooked meal to the kitchen once you have that
first taste. And should you come down with food poisoning, reporting
it to the health authorities would obviously be a violation of the
non-disclosure clause. Big Macs could be inscribed with a prohibition
against ever eating at Burger King again, PizzaHut could charge your
credit card for another supreme combo each week whether you come in
or not, etc.

Of course, considering how other industries are cashing in on the
intellectual property land grab, you can't really blame those in the
food business for wanting to get in on the act. We all see the media
conglomerates pushing the boundaries of copyright law, the patent
trolls raking in millions for phony inventions, and the lawyers
pretending that their sneakwrap fine print constitute a sacred pact.
So why be surprised when yet another group cooks up ways to take the
food out of our mouths?

Read and post comments about this story here.
Posted by Ed Foster on October 12, 2006 10:46 AM