Last week, Eater's Gabe Ulla took an in-depth look at copying in cooking, talking to chefs from Wylie Dufresne in New York to Christian Puglisi of Copenhagen's Relae about the importance of attributing sources in the kitchen. Though most of the piece deals with what a lawyer might call "community norms" — how the chef community regulates itself through the court of public opinion to minimize culinary plagiarism — the chefs didn't seem to find much protection at all in the real court system. Dufresne himself questions "why recipes aren't protectable."
Indeed, at first glance there seems to be little legal recourse for chefs for whom the community norms have failed. But as intellectual property and trademark lawyer (and former restaurant worker) Naomi Straus argues in the latest issue of the UCLA Law Review, chefs and restaurateurs might have legal options that wouldn't shut down the collaborative nature of their profession. Here now, the Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp associate talks about how chefs might protect themselves under trade dress law — and, yes, even copyright. She also explains why chef should want to at least consider protecting their intellectual property, even in a collaborative industry.
What exactly is trade dress, in layman's terms?
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