
Food taste 'not protected by copyright' rules EU court - sndean
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46193818
======
lixtra
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](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybaris)

~~~
ElBarto
Cooking recipes aren't protected as far as I remember so it would have been
surprising to protect the end result.

~~~
beatgammit
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/#protected](https://paleoflourish.com/recipe-copyright/#protected)

~~~
ElBarto
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.

~~~
wiz21c
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)

------
contravariant
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.

~~~
tantalor
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.

~~~
contravariant
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.

~~~
euyyn
Not being able to enforce a specific aspect of copyright law led in the 80's
to pretty much all countries having to reform their laws.

When home VCRs became commonplace, creating an automatic copy of a broadcast
was still illegal. Some German high court ruled that people's right to privacy
in their own homes trumped law enforcement's interest in enforcing copyright,
so the law was unenforceable in those cases. Hence was born the exemption for
"copies for private use", and the related "tax" applied to sales of VCRs (and
later on, blank CDs and DVDs) that was used to pay off author associations.

------
Siemer
It's also worth noting that Heksenkaas is a ridiculously overpriced product,
which probably explains why they are trying so hard to keep the competition at
bay.

~~~
Freak_NL
I've bought it on sale, but it's just not that appealing. Definitely
overpriced.

------
nmstoker
Funny the article made no mention of smell, which one might suspect would be
treated in a similar way.

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

~~~
oneplane
I think one of the problems is that color and what you see is somewhat tightly
related where taste and how taste works is highly varied.

While you can get some sort of single-molecule chemical representation of some
specific smell or taste, that would be static (as in, the formula or
construction wouldn't change) but most people would smell different things.

I suppose for those 'inventions' the recipe or method would be
trademarked/copyrighted/patented but not the result.

------
cpach
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.

~~~
adrianN
Creating a good dish doesn't seem any less artistic that creating a good song.

~~~
cpach
I agree that food can be works of art and can require great skill. But to
apply copyright laws to food still seems inadequate to me.

------
oh-kumudo
Well, different people have different taste buds, how are you going to make
sure there is a universally agreed representation, of taste?

~~~
mygo
well different people have different retinas, how are you going to make sure
there is a universally agreed representation, of a colored trademark =p

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08)

~~~
realusername
I agree with that personally, having a trademark for a particular colour is
clearly a dubious concept.

~~~
lozenge
The trademark can only apply to related products. For example you can't sell
phones with a logo using t mobile's colour, but you can sell shampoo.

~~~
mjlee
But you can't sell Apple Device Management software:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
sussex-44107621](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-44107621)

------
anticensor
That is not a problem. They would invent a chemical footprint IP right to
cover.

~~~
simonh
Even assuming it can be specified precisely enough, they would have to ensure
their own product always fell within the footprint, and if the rival product
deviated even slightly from it - but not enough to taste significantly
different - they would be fine.

But of course to work to do all this would be fantastically expensive in
practice, which is a whole other major problem,

~~~
anticensor
I think you can describe a group or mixture of chemicals in a chemical
footprint in its particular chemical properties, for example, "an alkane chain
of 80-85 carbons with an alcohol bound on carbon no. 21 and an ethyl-keto bond
on second to the last carbon". Does not have to single out a chemical.

~~~
simonh
How many such chemicals and variations on them are found in, say, as single
one of the herbs in the cheese in question? But then it's not just about the
raw chemicals in say the herb plant cells, it's also about their structure and
relationship with each other.

If you just took a list of all the chemical compounds in say the cells of a
herb plant leaf and synthesized them in a chemical slurry I doubt it would
taste much like the herb. Which chemicals in the leaf fragments actually
evaporate causing the smell? Which ones diffuse into the cheese, and how does
the structure mediate that?

------
type0
CopyRighteousness strikes again, how long will it take before someone could
copyright the air?

~~~
jpatokal
Quite the opposite: the EU found that you _cannot_ copyright food tastes.

~~~
type0
Yes, sure. Just shows that their lobbying was ineffective, better luck next
time.

------
emilfihlman
This is a strange common sense ruling from the EU, which is most often the
lapdog of copyright trolls.

~~~
toyg
On food, EU authorities don’t mess about. There is a complicated set of
regulations to mark “characteristic” food, which is enforced very rigorously
across the continent. The problem seems to be that such regulations mostly
cover _traditional_ foodstuffs, whereas modern industrial concoctions (like
this crappy cheese) are ignored. Claiming copyright was a somewhat-clever
attempt to extend protections.

~~~
mrob
The EU protected designation of origin etc. rights are effectively trademarks,
so unlike copyrights or patents there's no harm to consumers. You're free to
introduce competing products with the same taste under a different name, e.g.
Champagne has to be produced in Champagne in France with specific ingredients
and technique, but Spain produces Cava, which is almost identical.

~~~
foobar1962
In Australia we make "Sparkling Wine."

