Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!hplabs!glacier!reid From: reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) Newsgroups: net.cooks,net.legal Subject: Re: Copyright and cookbooks Message-ID: <5737@glacier.ARPA> Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 01:32:02 EST Article-I.D.: glacier.5737 Posted: Thu Mar 27 01:32:02 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 01:35:52 EST References: <5475@glacier.ARPA> <5145@alice.uUCp> <558@mtxinu.UUCP> Reply-To: reid@glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid) Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab Lines: 51 Xref: watmath net.cooks:6322 net.legal:3181 Geez, here we go again. I'm not a lawyer, but I've researched this so carefully that I will speak with the authority of one. Here is a quotation from Circular R1, "The Nuts and Bolts of Copyright", published (but not copyrighted) by the Copyright Offrice, Library of Congress, Washington DC. You can obtain a copy of this circular free of charge by writing to the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, Washington DC 20559. You might also ask for "Circular R2: Publications of the Copyright Office" to find out what else you can order. --------------------- begin quotation ---------------------------- WHAT CANNOT BE COPYRIGHTED Several categories of material are generally not eligible for statutory copyright protection. These include among others: * Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression. For example: choreographic works which have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded. * Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents. << Read this next one carefully, folks: >> * Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration. --------------------- end quotation ---------------------------- If you merely paraphrase the words of a recipe, I guess that you would be making a derivative work. But if you read the recipe, understand it, learn the formula, and then from that formula you write down the words of a new recipe, my guess is that you would not lose an infringement suit. It is up to the courts to decide precisely what behavior constitutes infringement in this case, and the courts don't seem to care enough about this issue to have set very many precedents. What is hard for us mathematically-oriented computer science types to understand is that ultimately copyright is whatever courts and judges hold it to be, and courts and judges can be remarkably capricious and inconsistent. Perhaps we would like legal rules that are as solid as algebraic rules, but it doesn't work that way. Reality in law is determined not just by statute, but also by trends in the courtroom. Who is suing whom these days? What are judges deciding? Who is winning and who is losing? The truth of the matter is that people do not get sued for copyright infringement when they crib the formula for a recipe and rewrite it. That means that, effectively, it is not an infringement of copyright to do so. As a matter of ethical principle, it also says fairly clearly in the copyright law, Public Law 94-553 (90 Stat. 2541), that you cannot copyright a formula, procedure, process, or method. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA