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Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

bbc.com

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Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#71

Post by cyborgx7 »

mdpopescu wrote: post #45
cpach wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Some people seem fond of trying to use copyright as a tool to prevent competition, but of course that’s not at all what it was intended for.

Er... preventing competition and aiding censorship are exactly what it was created for [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

All discussions on the legitimacy of intellectual property are basically mute until the protection periods go back to something reasonable of at most 20 years.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#72

Post by Tor3 »

tomtompl wrote: post #59
lixtra wrote: post #37

This is surprising since food is one of the oldest subjects of “IP” in Europe: > [Sybaris around 700 BC] pioneered the concept of intellectual property to ensure that cooks could exclusively profit from their signature dishes for a whole year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybaris

EU != Europe though

Not sure why you were downvoted. EU isn't all of Europe, for what it's worth. There are around 50 sovereing states in Europe, while EU has 28 members (plus a couple of EFTA states).

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#73

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Angostura wrote: post #67
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, trademark. I don't know what possessed me.

Playdoh recently managed to trademark its smell.

That's interesting, I thought the smell was a result of the ingredients - which would make it non-distinctive and unsuitable for a trademark (as others would be excluded from making the product so the trademark would operate as a perpetual patent).

Maybe the smell is a trademark only for other goods (I don't know what Class Playdoh falls in, toys?), eg Playdoh scented merch?

On searching I found an informed, brief treatment here https://loweringthebar.net/2018/05/play-doh-smell-trademarke....

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#74

Post by wiz21c »

ElBarto wrote: post #57
beatgammit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be true for the most part, but if your recipe contains a lengthy narrative or something, the work as a whole could be covered by copyright[1]. I've seen this in a lot of blogs and recipe books, but I don't know how far it extends, and I'm sure someone could extract just the base recipe from the narrative and the derivative work wouldn't violate copyright. - [1] https://paleoflourish.com/recipe-copyright…

Yes, but in that case the copyright extends to the literary work, not the recipe (i.e. the technical process) itself. Once you have published a cooking recipe you cannot prevent anyone from recreating the dish by following that recipe, even restaurants.

Yup. In Europe you don't copyright "ideas" but expressions of them. If a whistle a song and you make a song out of it and sell millions of copies, then I can't claim anything. Now, if I have a sheet of music with that tune written on it, that predates your own version, then I win.

That's made to ensure that ideas are free to flow. That's very good for auhtors (and society in general, as far as I'm concerned)

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#75

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mdpopescu wrote: post #45
cpach wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Some people seem fond of trying to use copyright as a tool to prevent competition, but of course that’s not at all what it was intended for.

Er... preventing competition and aiding censorship are exactly what it was created for [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

Hmm, the Licensing of the Press Act to me is not copyright, it doesn't prevent copying, it prevents the use of printing presses IIRC. It also addresses sedition.

The Statute of Anne includes the deal of provision of copies on deposit to named libraries, and of entry to the public domain; education and availability of publications are specific aims.

It provides a reward period of up to 14 years (the cost of printing being considerable), and then entry to the public domain making for easy and open competition.

It would be like saying today that a monopoly period of 14 months on a book was inhibiting competition - such a period allows recovery of costs, and so aids the dissemination of literary and artistic works by make it cost-effective. Yes, it inhibits competition, but key to the other aims is that this inhibition is limited in order to provide a genuine, timely benefit to the public.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#76

Post by amelius »

matteuan wrote: post #54
cpach wrote: post #30

It strikes me as very odd that anyone would even try argue in court that food could be compared to photography, literature, music or film.

Centuries of culinary arts disagree with your statement. Craftsmanship and creativity are required to create new dishes in the same degree to other other arts. Imo we should use common sense to distinguish between basic preparations and elaborate foods.

Problem is that "common sense" is not easily encoded in law.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#77

Post by AstralStorm »

shakna wrote: post #62
chottocharaii wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are under Australian copyright law

Kinda, sorta, but not in the way most people think. > Copyright does not protect information about the ingredients or cooking methods. > It is not an infringement of copyright to watch someone prepare a dish and write down the ingredients and method in your own words. What's copyrighted, is the word-for-word original reference. If you reword it, then that's free to disseminate. It isn't what people think of as a reci…

Not exactly just minor rewording because you could still be in breach. You need to make major modifications.

Patenting an innovative recipe is perfectly allowed though, including design patents of the innovative look of the item.

This kind of cheese is not considered innovative enough though.

If it's distinguishable enough, you can also trademark the thing.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#78

Post by AstralStorm »

ajuc wrote: post #65
maxxxxx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder, is there any formal representation for smells like we have with colors?

You could just specify the chemicals and their proportions in air.

That's good enough for a design patent but not for a trademark.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#79

Post by contravariant »

tantalor wrote: post #70
contravariant wrote: post #66

It's somewhat unfortunate that the ruling merely reasons that it wouldn't be practically possible, rather than reasoning that such a copyright would be a burden on society without any real gain.

Isn't that a stronger argument? The reason you aren't allowed to hunt unicorns is that they don't exist, not that they are sentient creatures.

Not being able to enforce a law is a pretty weak argument. Hunting unicorns isn't the best comparison as that one would be fairly easy to enforce.

If you're more concerned with the unenforceability than the consequences of enforcing a law then something has gone wrong. Going back to your example, a law against hunting sentient creatures would make sense regardless of the fact that establishing sentience is a hard philosophical problem.

Re: Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court

#80

Post by qaminsod »

p1mrx wrote: post #29
qaminsod wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep you can make sense of it. Everyone can, and does. It happens every time cars stop at a red stop light. You're assuming we all agree on what stop lights, rules of the road, cars, etc. are. If you see a red stop light from your perspective, I may see what from my perspective is a yellow ball - if you were to replace some part of your 'world-interpreter' with part of mine you might see a green frog. Also, just bec…

Have you, like, been to reality? If it were inconsistent to that extent, I think someone would have noticed by now. The fact that we can build computers, and run code on them for decades without anything particularly strange occurring, provides evidence that our corner of the universe is reasonably stable.

> If it were inconsistent to that extent

To what extent? Do we have a way of measuring our understanding of the world?

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