Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Questionable Use Of Custom In Intellectual Property, Jennifer E. Rothman
The Questionable Use Of Custom In Intellectual Property, Jennifer E. Rothman
All Faculty Scholarship
The treatment of customary practices has been widely debated in many areas of the law, but there has been virtually no discussion of how custom is and should be treated in the context of intellectual property (IP). Nevertheless, customs have a profound impact on both de facto and de jure IP law. The unarticulated incorporation of custom threatens to swallow up IP law, and replace it with industry-led IP regimes that give the public and other creators more limited rights to access and use intellectual property than were envisioned by the Constitution and Congress. This article presents a powerful critique …
On The Legal Consequences Of Sauces: Should Thomas Keller's Recipes Be Per Se Copyrightable?, Christopher J. Buccafusco
On The Legal Consequences Of Sauces: Should Thomas Keller's Recipes Be Per Se Copyrightable?, Christopher J. Buccafusco
All Faculty Scholarship
The restaurant industry now takes in over $500 billion a year, but recent courts have been skeptical of the notion that one of its most valuable assets, original recipes, are subject to copyright protection. With more litigation looming and the contours of the debate insufficiently mapped out, this article establishes the appropriate groundwork for analyzing the copyrightability of recipes. I show that, contrary to recent appellate court opinions, recipes meet the statutory requirements for copyrightability. I argue, by analogizing to musical compositions, that written recipes work to satisfy the fixation requirement of copyright law just as musical notation does for …