Malaysia Seeking to Copyright Food?

Techdirt is reporting that Malaysia seems to be jumping on the copyright/trademark bandwagon and attempting to protect the "ownership" of certain ethnic foods. Of course, this may just be a massive PR push in an attempt to grab some eyeballs. "Last year, around this time, we noted that the country of Lebanon was trying to claim that it owns hummus and other middle eastern foods, such as falafel, tabouleh and baba gannouj, and that no other country could produce them. It seems that other parts of the world are seeing the same sort of thing, as Malaysia is trying to declare that it owns popular Malaysian dishes, like nasi lemak."

Comments

Not a new phenominon

[tsotha]

I don't know how you could blame them. In 1997 a US company called RiceTek patented a strain of Rice they called Basmati, a name the Indians have been using for centuries. All kinds of companies take out defensive patents, where they never intend to collect money from other people, but they don't want to pay for obvious ideas either. There's no reason the same thing wouldn't happen in the copyright arena. From here:

According to Dr Vandana Shiva, director of a Delhi-based research foundation which monitors issues involving patents and biopiracy, the main aim for obtaining the patent by RiceTec Inc. is to fool the consumers in believing there is no difference between spurious Basmati and real Basmati. Moreover, she claims the "theft involved in the Basmati patent is, therefore, threefold: a theft of collective intellectual and biodiversity heritage on Indian farmers, a theft from Indian traders and exporters whose markets are being stolen by RiceTec Inc., and finally a deception of consumers since RiceTec is using a stolen name Basmati for rice which are derived from Indian rice but not grown in India, and hence are not the same quality."

It doesn't seem odd the Malaysians would seek to prevent similar problems. The situation isn't exactly the same, since this is a copyright and RiceTek took out a patent, but I think the business objective is the same.

Re:Surprising

[cpt kangarooski]

It sounds a little silly, but how different is it from other copyrights?

Copyrights cover creative works; it's patents that cover useful arts. Food is rendered uncopyrightable due to utility. Methods of preparing food, i.e. recipes, are uncopyrightable as well. While inventive chefs could seek patents, and some do, it seems to be fairly uncommon, and the requirement of novelty would make it useless here anyway.

What this really sounds like to me is a designation of origin issue, which is somewhat like a trademark. Personally, I'm not a big fan of them. Champagne, to me at least, is a product which can be made in many different places around the world. I don't mind putting a national or regional appellation on it (French champagne, Australian champagne) if it is applied equally to everyone, but I don't like the idea that it can only be called champagne at all if it is from a specific part of France, regardless of how similar or even identical it might be with the same product made elsewhere. This, IMO, doesn't inform customers, but misleads them, and doesn't aid the market, but hinders it (by implicitly discouraging competition by outside manufacturers).

Re:no worries

[Tuidjy]

In the same way that Bulgaria, Serbia, and Belgium produce 'cheap knockoffs' of Feta cheese, but have to call it something else, because Greece has been awarded the 'copyright' by the EU?

"Appellation d'origine contrôlée" has existed for centuries, and there are plenty of sensible arguments for and against it. I would not mind seeing where Slashdot stands on that issue, but presenting what Malaysia is doing as a brand new concept is ridiculous.

Re:no worries

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

"Appellation d'origine contrôlée" has existed for centuries, and there are plenty of sensible arguments for and against it. I would not mind seeing where Slashdot stands on that issue, but presenting what Malaysia is doing as a brand new concept is ridiculous.

The problem here is that what Malaysia is doing, as described by the article linked from the article linked from the posting (grrrr), isn't in fact a form of AOC. AOC has never been applied to recipes; it has only been applied to ingredients and processed agricultural products.

In the case of an AOC, the intent is clear: if the region of Sancerre makes a remarkable wine and people seek it out as being special, it would be good to prevent winemakers not from Sancerre from labeling ultra-cheap wines as "Sancerre" and selling it for inflated prices. In the case of Malaysian recipes, on the other hand, it's not at all clear what the intent is, since it just cannot be analogous. Recipes are things that people prepare when they want to eat them, not a finished foodstuff that they buy. The closest I can stretch this analogy would be some sort of ban on preventing non-Malaysian companies from labeling frozen or instant packaged meals with the names of the Malaysian dishes, but even that just degenerates into absurdity when you try to apply it to restaurants who cook their own nasi lemak on a per-order basis.