Recipe Etiquette. Dos ,Donts and more

They do carry legal force if you really wanted to go after someone stealing your work

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Recipes are not protected under copyright laws , there are some protections but not in any of these cases…

There are two main reasons why recipes cannot be trademarked: they are considered “useful articles” and “ideas.” Under U.S. law

Its a cute idea for a recipe site to attach to them …

In the US, a landmark case on recipes was Publications International vs Meredith, about a book of yogurt recipes by a famous international brand, where the court stated: “The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of each dish is a statement of facts.” So it seems copyright is not of much help,

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This is how ive understood it as well.

A long time ago i decided that if i put something on the open web it is for anyone to do whatever they want with, not just recipes. But i completely understand why folks would want to protect or at least have credit given. I was pretty fierce about it at first, even sending some not so nice PMs in the early days.

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True that! Flavorah has to take some responsibility though. ATF was a dead business before Flavorah took it over. They don’t need the bad publicity. It’s about time they did take the responsibility of policing their site. It would be a headache for them but it gets them a lot of good publicity. People stop publishing recipes that’s a lot of good will lost.

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Yes , 100pct …I agree …I think we had this talk with @DarthVapor about recipes and copyright years ago…Now a company that has a trademark can come to this site and have a “clone” taken down if it say Cuttwood Unicorn Milk if cuttwood name is trademarked but none of us who post a recipe on any site are not protected by copyrigght law just because we attach the copyright law .

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I do remember that discussion well, i think he slapped me out of it and did me a great favor. It comes up from time to time, always happy to discuss it.

And to my knowledge we have never been requested to take down a recipe in any legal fashion, but ive spent a lot of time away.

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I always assumed that the Copyrigght option on ATF was for fun , just something to make the recipes look better like adding pics and descriptiin etc etc…I never thought anyine would think the recipes were actually legally protected…

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Vgod made some request years ago and the community blew its lid lmao…Ill have to find it .If i remember correctly they threatened Lars with lawsuut or a cease and desist letter …Vgod got so many negative ratings on their site they had to shut it down lmao

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Only if there is a legal US or foreign registered copyright can it be forced to take it down. ATF statement is a honor among thief’s type of protection. In other words useless.

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That i didnt know. I just know its enforcable when it comes to stuff like cad design and coding

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@fidalgo_vapes

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And there was the whole HiC fiasco with ECF, and they’re still buthurt to this day. No links to/from ELR allowed

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Truth! As I’d expect from a stranger, but not someone I know.

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I know from first hand experience how this works. I had a large Eliquid Company (No longer in business). Who I was helping with their DIY Group on FB. It came to my attention they were using some of my recipes. To be specific their Head Mixer and Group Moderator, One recipe in particular they didn’t even change the name of. I contacted the Owners, they responded saying they had no intention of paying for the use of or acknowledging me as the Creator. I contacted an Attorney they told me there was very little I could do. Intellectual property where it concerns Recipes that are shared publicly are not protected by Copyright, Patent, Trademark or Trade Secret.
Very disheartening and frustrating. It was at this point I made 11 of my recipes private. Including the Recipe winner 2019 FlavourArt (FA) North America. Since then I no longer make public any of my recipes. Much like KFC protect your recipes as trade secret. And in the end if someone decides to reverse engineer that recipe there is nothing you can do.

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Key word here is “sharing”…
but yeah, credit to creator should be given and at least comment and rate the OG mix

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Mark that sucks…I did notice yiu dont drop recipes like you use to

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That is a real shame @Mark_Turner.

And that makes it even worse, that YOU, were helping THEM. Sorry to hear that Mark.

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Dman, The Lawyers are still hounding me over this one…

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