[Sca-cooks] Copyright question?

[Johnna Holloway]

Thanks for the excellent summary with copyright www information.

Patterns are rather interesting because one gets into
the issue of what one is selling. Are you selling a dress that
you've made based upon Xenobia's famous Elizabethan gown
and you used her patterns A,B and D from which to make that
gown? Are you saying Xenobia's Gown for sale in your ads?
Or are you using her pattern and combining it with other elements
and creating something new and original?
(See http://www.margospatterns.com/usage.htm  for a take on this)

Recipe copyright has always been an interesting story. I have been
around long enough to have seen it take many forms. Even before
the internet exploded with millions of recipes online for the taking
and reposting, there's always been  problems associated with
people in the SCA simply reprinting commercial recipes and calling them 
their own.
Call it copyright infringement, plagiarism, theft of material, fraud,
sloppy citation, misrepresentation, or simply bad manners.
There are complied SCA cookbooks that are reprinted combinations of
Lorna Sass, Lorwin, and Hieatt and Butler. Some authors were credited
and some authors weren't. Most of the recipes were word for word copies.
This was neither courteous nor honest, but the Society
for the most part didn't care. I caught one would be author passing off 
a distinctive
recipe as his very own under his "copyright." It was a word for word 
copy of the original
with no mention of the original author. When confronted with his 
misdeed, he said, "It was ok, as no one
would ever know." One local newsletter that I once subscribed to 
reprinted in full
two whole pages of one rather distinctive cookbook
The SCA author of this article left out crediting the actual author by 
the way and signed her own
name to said SCA article. Repercussions? The "SCA author" was created a 
court baroness.
The commercial publisher in NYC was not at all amused by the way.

One thing that one can do and that has been done-- is to trademark the 
food creation.
See http://www.derbypie.com/mystery.htm  for information on how this was 
done with
the famous Derby Pie.

If you want to read more about copyright and food writing, you might 
take a look at:
Recipes Into Type by Whitman and Simon or  More Food Writing Guidelines 
by the IACP.
There are a number of these guides. Check with your local library and 
see what they have
to offer in this area. They are interesting to read if you are serious 
about publication.

Johnnae


> Ok, folks who are in the copyright know.  There's been talk about the 
> fact that you can't copyright a recipe, though you can copyright the 
> exact wording of the instructions.
> Specifically, from the copyright office: snipped 
> http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html
> snipped
> Femke
>