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Food Taste 'Not Protected By Copyright,' EU Court Rules (bbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the taste-you-can-see dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The taste of a food cannot be protected by copyright, the EU's highest legal authority has ruled in a case involving a Dutch cheese. The European Court of Justice said the taste of food was too "subjective and variable" for it to meet the requirements for copyright protection. The court was asked to rule in the case of a spreadable cream cheese and herb dip, Heksenkaas, produced by Levola. Levola argued another cheese, Witte Wievenkaas, infringed its copyright. The firm claimed that Heksenkaas was a work protected by copyright; it asked the Dutch courts to insist Smilde, the producers of Witte Wievenkaas, cease the production and sale of its cheese. The Court of Justice of the European Union was asked by Netherlands' court of appeal to rule on whether the taste of a food could be protected under the Copyright Directive. In order to quality for copyright, the taste of food must be capable of being classified as a "work" and has to meet two criteria: That it was an original intellectual creation; That there was an "expression" of that creation that makes it "identifiable with sufficient precision and objectivity."

The court found that "the taste of a food product cannot be identified with precision and objectivity." It said it was "identified essentially on the basis of taste sensations and experiences, which are subjective and variable," citing age, food preferences and consumption habits as examples which could influence the taster.

107 comments

  1. Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The dumbasses should have used patents instead of copyrights. They could have easily patented the process used to make the cheese (process patent), the mechanical properties of the cheese (utility patent), and the appearance of the cheese (design patent), and sued in the Southern District of Texas for 49 Billion dollars in real and imagined damages.

    1. Re: Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A possibly quite relevant comment to be downvoted for the use of a dumbass insult. Shame, really.

    2. Re: Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a pretty great bespoke artisanal CPU you've got there.

    3. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by sh00z · · Score: 2

      Actually, Trademarks would have been more appropriate. Patents expire, Trademarks can be protected indefinitely.

    4. Re: Dumbasses should have used Patents by Type44Q · · Score: 0

      Mod up.

    5. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, copyright doesn't cost a thing. Patent costs money, so they choose to go the cheapest way.

    6. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why I only eat my own organic and artisan foods and drink my own craft beers. There is no danger of infringing on anyone else's work and I know exactly what goes in it. I have no desire to participate in this fucked up corporate culture we live in.

      That's not true. If something is patented (e.g. your food, beer, etc.), even you created something by your own without knowing, but the invention is as described in the patent, you could be sued if you made any money out of your invention. It is not what you know whether the patent exists, it is what you do that may be covered by a patent. That's how patent works.

      PS: Naturally food can't be patented, but there are some that work around to circumvent what described as food...

    7. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Patents would have expired long ago. They prefer copyright because it's practically forever.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re: Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trademark protection for confusingly similar only applies to marks, designs, letters-- unfortunately not taste:)

    9. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0

      How did this get modded up? Just a bitter temper tantrum? The patents would have expired long ago. I swear, the Anonymous Coward comments these days are some kind of verbal diarrhea therapy for disturbed individuals. It's sad, I used to browse at Score:0 as a matter of pride.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    10. Re: Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Browse at -1 for the real gems. It makes me so thankful for my sanity and ashamed of my country's approach to mental health.

    11. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, Trademarks would have been more appropriate.

      Except you can't trademark a recipe.

      You can trademark a brand, or a logo, or your packaging, but definitely not a recipe. Trademarks and copyrights cover entirely different things.

      So, go ahead, trademark Uncle Bubba's Pulled Pork Shack. But don't think for a minute it stops anyone else from also making pulled pork.

      This is a case of someone trying to say "how dare you make something which tastes like what I make" and their lawyers deciding to try it out.

      To me, the only sensible outcome here is to say that, no, you get no copyright protection on your recipe. And you certainly don't get to say that combining a couple of common herbs and spices is somehow a creative work worthy of copyright or anything else.

      I bet the right person can taste that cream cheese, list off the herbs they think they taste, and come up with a pretty reasonable facsimile of it. In fact, I don't need to bet, because I've done it, and so has every other cook in history.

    12. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are your craft beers gluten-free and full of antioxidants?

    13. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by mcvos · · Score: 2

      Maybe they could also argue that the name infringes. Witte Wieven are ghostly witches. Heksen are witches. These are honestly the only two Dutch cheeses I know that have supernatural creatures in their name (though I don't claim to know all). If they're also very similar in content, it's rather obvious it's an intentional copy.

    14. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I drink corporation beers only - 'brewed' in 0.5 seconds from high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, flavors and colors plus alcohol!

    15. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I am sure there is prior art for the taste of Dirt and Urine. Kidding aside.
      Just because they may not be willing to catch you for Copyright violation, it doesn't mean you are not committing it.
      If this Taste was protected by Copyright law, then the food and beer you make (assuming you lived in the EU) was close enough to what some other company made, then you could be in violation. Chances are they are not going to put the hammer down on you, because you are not selling it. But if you were and these companies saw you as a threat, chances are you could get in trouble.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    16. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      You can Copyright the recipe, but this would only protect yourself if someone posted an other cookbook with the same recipe. Not from someone who read it and made their own product from it.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    17. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by brianerst · · Score: 1

      You actually can't copyright recipes in the United States. The only thing you can copyright is the text surrounding the recipe.

    18. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by tricorn · · Score: 1

      It would only be copyright violation if he'd tasted someone's copyrighted food or drink. Independent creation is a defense against copyright violation.

      US precedent is that recipes are not copyrightable, I don't see any way that the courts here would allow an end run by allowing taste to be copyrighted.

    19. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could be sued even if you don't make money from it. The non-profit/personal use exemption is a myth.

    20. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The dumbasses should have used patents instead of copyrights. They could have easily patented the process used to make the cheese (process patent), the mechanical properties of the cheese (utility patent), and the appearance of the cheese (design patent), and sued in the Eastern District of Texas for 49 Trillion dollars in real and imagined damages.

      FTFY.

    21. Re:Dumbasses should have used Patents by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 1

      To make their patent applications foolproof, they could patent the process and design "on a computer."

  2. unlike music? by AarghVark · · Score: 5, Interesting
    > citing age, food preferences and consumption habits as examples which could influence the taster.

    So totally unlike music? Wonder what sort of precedent this interpretation may be setting.

    1. Re: unlike music? by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      So totally unlike music?

      Totally.

    2. Re:unlike music? by Tomahawk · · Score: 1

      With music, you write notes on paper. Those notes are then copyrighted. Music copyright covers melody lines, so someone taking a melody and creating an arrangement that sounds very different would still be infringing the copyright if the used the same melody. (and, yes, that covered changing the key too).

      Like someone already said above, had they gone after process, ingredients and quantities, and those sort of quantifiable things, they may have done better.

    3. Re:unlike music? by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2

      There is a difference between taste and music. Music is more comparable to the composition of the food (which can be objectively determined), whereas taste is more comparable to the enjoyment of music. The enjoyment of music cannot be copyrighted (yet).

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    4. Re:unlike music? by pr0t0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's kind of interesting when you zoom out a little and think of copyright protections as they apply to the senses. The scent of a perfume has long been ruled as something not protected. Taste, as this rule shows, has also been long considered as not protected. Sound though, whether as intricate as a song, or as simple as the old "Sosumi" of early Macs, has always been protected. Almost everything visual can be copyright protected. The Nike "Swoosh" for example is a pretty simple shape, but good luck using a similar one in any context.

      Subjectivity in taste and smell appear to be the largest contributor to the disparity, although I would argue it would be very difficult to prove sight and sound are any less subjective. The true experience of sensory input of someone other than yourself can never be fully understood.

      Why is that a cheese, taking years to craft and refine into a product for which the producer is happy in terms of recipe and methodology, is any less protected than a simple song?

      Not that I'm arguing for cheese protection or cheese rights. I just think it's an interesting thought-exercise that some forms of sensory input have more legal protections than others.

      --
      I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
    5. Re:unlike music? by pr0t0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Going a bit further, and to the absurd, can you imagine what it would be like if we treated foods the way we treat music?

      No, you cannot give the cheese to someone else. You didn't buy the cheese, you just bought a license to eat it. Sorry, placing it on a cracker does not constitute significant alteration under fair use. If you want to serve the cheese to your patrons, you'll have to pay a licensing fee similar to ASCAP, and the person who came up with the recipe will also need to be paid royalties. Oh, so you did share the cheese? We will file suit, and since we cannot determine which particular cheese you shared, the damages we seek will be based on all the food in your house.

      --
      I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
    6. Re:unlike music? by c · · Score: 1

      Why is that a cheese, taking years to craft and refine into a product for which the producer is happy in terms of recipe and methodology, is any less protected than a simple song?

      Most likely it has something to do with how true and accurate reproductions of the song can be (and similarly for video products), both in terms of the original notation or recorded performance.

      Cheese is an agricultural product and technically can never be replicated perfectly identically.

      Trademark and production process patent seem to be the way to go there...

      --
      Log in or piss off.
    7. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is that a cheese, taking years to craft and refine into a product for which the producer is happy in terms of recipe and methodology, is any less protected than a simple song?

      I would argue that this company neither created the specific concept of a spreadable cream cheese dip, nor did anything particularly different than someone's grandmother did years ago. Hell, they likely started with someone's family recipe and tinkered with it.

      They have a recipe, they didn't create the idea of that recipe, and they didn't use some magical combination of herbs which nobody else could have (or actually did) produce on their own. They certainly won't have anything secret or not available to someone who can taste it and know the flavours in it. At best you could have a trade secret of how you do something you're not willing to tell anybody.

      People have been stealing and reverse engineering recipes for probably literally thousands of years.

      Cooking is all about taste and technique, but cream cheese dip sure as hell isn't innovation, an invention, or something you can keep secret. If you can reproduce the recipes of a Michelin star chef, you're probably a pretty good cook ... but once you've eaten something, you know what it is and what it tastes like, and might have a good idea of how to recreate it.

      Your cookbook can be copyrighted, and your brand can be trademarked, but your recipes can be adapted and re-made by an endless number of people.

      Copyrighting food would be disastrous, because we all have to eat, and almost nobody is creating anything which someone else hasn't done before -- and even if you do, it's all technique (like the food wizards using liquid nitrogen and the like). The actual ingredients have been around forever.

    8. Re:unlike music? by H3lldr0p · · Score: 2

      Like someone already said above, had they gone after process, ingredients and quantities, and those sort of quantifiable things, they may have done better.

      Probably not. What you just described is a recipe. And save for specific versions of them, they cannot be the subject of a copyright claim. At best they get trade secret protection and that's about it.

      It really was nothing but a waste of court's time for this to have happened. They were grasping at straws for anything to have happened.

    9. Re: unlike music? by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      what it would be like if we treated foods the way we treat music?

      These days, we do: they're both shat out of someone's ass.

    10. Re: unlike music? by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Funny

      That sounds like an unlicensed derivative work!

    11. Re:unlike music? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      So totally unlike music?

      Yes, totally unlike music. Music can be objectively compared. Taste cannot. Now if they cheese company sued about the chemical composition they may have a case, but they may also find that different chemical compositions can taste incredibly similar.

    12. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't put it past the EU to allow recipes to be copyright protected if they thought of a way to fine Google out of a couple billion more euros.

    13. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      . Almost everything visual can be copyright protected. The Nike "Swoosh" for example is a pretty simple shape, but good luck using a similar one in any context.

      Yeah, no. The Nike swoosh is *not* protected by copyright, but by trademark law. Trademark, copyright and patents. Learn them, learn the difference, and punch everyone using the phrase "intellectual property".

    14. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With music, you write notes on paper. Those notes are then copyrighted. Music copyright covers melody lines, so someone taking a melody and creating an arrangement that sounds very different would still be infringing the copyright if the used the same melody. (and, yes, that covered changing the key too).

      Like someone already said above, had they gone after process, ingredients and quantities, and those sort of quantifiable things, they may have done better.

      Someone split a note in the tune "Good Morning to You" to give us "Happy Birthday to You" and was able to secure a copyright. Frank Delima, Weird Al, and others have been able to use tunes wholesale in parodies. Laws are purposefully nuanced.

    15. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Going a bit further, and to the absurd, can you imagine what it would be like if we treated foods the way we treat music?

      No, you cannot give the cheese to someone else. You didn't buy the cheese, you just bought a license to eat it. Sorry, placing it on a cracker does not constitute significant alteration under fair use. If you want to serve the cheese to your patrons, you'll have to pay a licensing fee similar to ASCAP, and the person who came up with the recipe will also need to be paid royalties. Oh, so you did share the cheese? We will file suit, and since we cannot determine which particular cheese you shared, the damages we seek will be based on all the food in your house.

      Cheese is a physical product while music is ethereal. There is a finite quantity of cheese (what I consume can't be consumed by another); thousands of people can consume the same music at the same time.

    16. Re: unlike music? by houghi · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of when I was in culinairy sxhool. A chef that does not share his knowledge has something bad to hide. Tgere are hundreds of tv shows where you see cooks make food. Good luck making the same food. It will not be the same.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    17. Re:unlike music? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The scent of a perfume has long been ruled as something not protected.

      So you are saying they should sell their cheese in an expensive looking bottle out of a boutique store or airport duty free area. The TV ads should feature a model dipped in milk and lounging around some villa, with a breathless voice-over announcing "Heksenkaas" as a bloke with designer stubble sniffs a cheese platter.

      Honestly I think they would sell a lot of cheese if they did that. Great idea, pr0t0.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:unlike music? by BringsApples · · Score: 1

      Dunno about that. If you look at music as though the air (that is vibrating) is the meal and the vibrations (notes) are the ingredients. Then copyrighting music is literally no different than cooking a dish, and forcing it to be eaten in a specific manner or order, like maybe a push-pop, then copyrighting the whole "process" as a "thing". That's all music is: vibrations in the air, in a specific order. So maybe one could copyright specific meals, where said meals have specific dishes, comprised of specific recipes.

      Next thing you know, you're not allowed to cook mashed potatoes, green beans, corn and pork chops, without some equivalent to the RIAA coming to check the recipes of each dish.

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    19. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The difference between Sight and Sound is that if you sample 100 people about that they see or hear (ie. Nike Swoosh, or a popular song) they will be able to identify it with near perfect accuracy. With Taste and Smell, I doubt you could get perfect survey accuracy when sampling 100 users to correctly identify a blind taste or smell test between something as common as Coke and Pepsi.

    20. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Going a bit further, and to the absurd, can you imagine what it would be like if we treated foods the way we treat music?

      No, you cannot give the cheese to someone else. You didn't buy the cheese, you just bought a license to eat it. Sorry, placing it on a cracker does not constitute significant alteration under fair use. If you want to serve the cheese to your patrons, you'll have to pay a licensing fee similar to ASCAP, and the person who came up with the recipe will also need to be paid royalties. Oh, so you did share the cheese? We will file suit, and since we cannot determine which particular cheese you shared, the damages we seek will be based on all the food in your house.

      Funny, but you'd need Jesus in there somewhere multiplying all the food for free, instantly delivering it to anyone who asks for it anywhere in the world for that comparison to really work.

    21. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe a US judge has put a lower limit on the number of sequential notes that can be copyrighted, it is 8.
      Those are 8 relative notes, so you can not simply transpose the notes without violating copyright.

      A mathematician already did the calculations, all the possible pleasing sequences of 8 notes have been used in copyrighted music many times over.

    22. Re:unlike music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Music is pretty easy to analyse, measure and write down in detail. We understand sound very very well, even how it is perceived by the brain.

      We do not know much about the actual tast and smell, maybe until we can make sensors that can smell and taste and synthesise smells and tastes from basic components in the same way we can do with sound and vision.

    23. Re:unlike music? by tricorn · · Score: 1

      I don't know the specifics of EU copyright law, but US law requires that a copyrighted work be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression".

      Recorded sound waves, written notes and lyrics, those are fixed. The taste or smell of cheese is not fixed, even if you could argue that cheese is a medium of expression.

    24. Re: unlike music? by Tomahawk · · Score: 1

      I was under the understanding that it was 4 bars, but I'll be honest in saying that I've never verified that, I just trusted the source. But there are laws and there in a minimum, like you said.

      For the Good Morning To You/Happy Birthday, all cases related to copyright here were down to who owned the copyright to the original Good Morning To You song, and whether that copyright was still valid. Happy Birthday was a known violation to the copyright. Splitting the first note did nothing here.

  3. Re:Typical for the dutch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In Amsterdam you can pay to fuck the cheeses

  4. Something's wrong here. by msauve · · Score: 1

    This ruling doesn't pass the smell test.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  5. If it was that easy... by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

    If it was that easy Coca Cola would have stopped Pepsi years ago

    --
    bickerdyke
    1. Re: If it was that easy... by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      One problem: they don't taste the same.

    2. Re: If it was that easy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The EU Court disagrees with that statement.

    3. Re:If it was that easy... by Tomahawk · · Score: 1

      But they taste nothing alike...

      That being said, it's quite common for a company to produce something that tastes the same (or very similar) to another product. Aldi produce a drink called Red Thunder. It's an energy drink sold in 250ml cans, and (certainly to me) tastes exactly like Red Bull, only much much cheaper. Red Bull can't really do anything about it as Aldi (or whomever makes it for Aldi) were careful to ensure that the name and look are dissimilar enough to prevent that.

    4. Re:If it was that easy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is where people around here seem to get IP wrong... cola!=cola!=cola

    5. Re:If it was that easy... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      But part of the appeal of Red Bull is being seen with the can in your hand. Why do you think Red Bull spends so much money sponsoring stunt airplane races, extreme sports, and so on? It's because that gives you the image of identifying with those activities when you carry the can around.

      Being seen with an off-brand knockoff just identifies you as a Grandpa who buys bulk no-name products and drives an old people car.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    6. Re: If it was that easy... by mcvos · · Score: 1

      We need judges with better taste buds.

    7. Re: If it was that easy... by rworne · · Score: 1

      Red Bull tastes a lot like any one of a multitude of Japanese energy/vitamin drinks that have been around for decades longer than Red Bull. Lipovitan being one example.

      --
      I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
    8. Re:If it was that easy... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I've tried a few own-label ones and some of them taste as good or even better.

      I don't buy them to identify with anything, I keep one or two in the fridge for when I'm in too much of a rush to make coffee but I need a hit.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:If it was that easy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being seen with an off-brand knockoff just identifies you as a Grandpa who buys bulk no-name products and drives an old people car.

      That depends on who does the seeing. At least I frown upon people I see in grocery stores that based on their clothing and appearance are of limited means but despite that spend money on brand name soft drinks and other (junk) food when any difference in taste is highly unlikely to be a genuine preference instead of advertising induced stupidity. Not to mention the inability such people seem to have to check for which packaging size is cheapest. Personally, I do admire reasonable frugality which is not to say that I don't enjoy luxuries and brand name products that genuinely taste better but I just despise completely pointless waste of money. And that's how I and others like me see you with your Red Bull can pretending that you're something else than just pathetic.

      And in terms of how I prefer being seen: I hate the fact that I occasionally have such a craving for a caffeine injection in the morning that I can't wait until reaching the coffee room at work and thus grab an energy drink when leaving home. The embarrassment would be doubled, if I was in addition to being seen drinking it also seen paying a premium for nothing.

    10. Re:If it was that easy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Red Bull make it for Aldi

  6. Cola Wars by gazelam · · Score: 1

    Hey - can we now revisit the whole cola war episode? Maybe the EU courts could straighten all that out.

    1. Re:Cola Wars by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

      Hey - can we now revisit the whole cola war episode? Maybe the EU courts could straighten all that out.

      Which cases are you talking about? Are you sure that they are about copyright? Not trademark? Not trade secret?

  7. The problem isn't precision. by hey! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bet a food chemist can do a pretty good job of telling you why a food tastes the way it does. Besides the basic taste components of sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami, the perceived flavor of food is primarily carried by volatile chemicals that can be isolated by chromatography. The remaining psychophysical element is texture, which can be mechanically analyzed.

    Sure, there may be subtle elements that are beyond the state of science at present to characterize, but insofar as elements that can be precisely characterized and are unique, there is just as much fundamental justification for copyrighting them as there is for copyrighting story or melody elements.

    The real problem is that we don't customarily copyrighted tastes. Doing so would introduce a change in the way people expect things to work we're not ready for that change.

    Property is a social construct if anything is. If you were the last person on Earth, it would be meaningless to worry whether it was morally right to break into a house or circumvent the DRM on a book. When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society. That change isn't as well integrated in our culture as personal possession or real estate, which have been part of our culture since preliterate times.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:The problem isn't precision. by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3

      When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society.

      For the ostensible purpose of advancing the arts and sciences.

      Since forbidding people to create works using a cartoon mouse from 90 years ago isn't really doing that, we might need to revisit this stuff ...

    2. Re:The problem isn't precision. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society.

      You will want to look into the history of copyright. It was introduced by the Monarchy (back then, the "Church") to control thought. For verification, re-read Areopagitica.

      Yes, you're thinking I'm crazy now, but go ahead, google it.

      The ones who control copyright have, for the most part (The Queen's printer still exists), changed, but the change that was socially engineered (control of thought) has not.

      You were probably duped by the US education system that insists the purpose of copyright is to advance the arts and science. Well, I'm here smashing that myth into tiny, fractured pieces.

    3. Re:The problem isn't precision. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet a food chemist can do a pretty good job of telling you why a food tastes the way it does.

      Considering the countless knock-off products that are very noticeably different compared to the original, I seriously doubt that.

    4. Re: The problem isn't precision. by hey! · · Score: 1

      I am very familiar with Multon's essay, but if you think politics didn't exist in Milton's time I don't think you should be worried about *my* historical literacy.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:The problem isn't precision. by dryeo · · Score: 2

      Actually, to give the full title,

      An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.

      You're thinking of the American copy 80 years later, though at the time, the arts and sciences covered most learning

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    6. Re:The problem isn't precision. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering the countless knock-off products that are very noticeably different compared to the original, I seriously doubt that.

      Chemsists can do a good replica. They don't, because that is expensive. The point of a knockoff is to provide a cheaper alternative to a reputed product. Cheaper, because you don't have the original reputation. So - no money to use on a perfect replica. Instead, they find a way to make something vaguely similar in a cheaper way.

    7. Re:The problem isn't precision. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago,

      *facepalm*

      Copyright is an ARTIFICIAL monopoly. Copyright was invented BY PUBLISHERS to prevent _other publishers_ from profiting from printing. Hence the "right" to copy.

      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    8. Re:The problem isn't precision. by Theaetetus · · Score: 1

      When politicians created the notion of "intellectual property" around two to three centuries ago, they were intentionally engineering a change in their society.

      Significantly longer than that. Patents have existed for almost 600 years, and trademarks date back to ancient Rome.

    9. Re:The problem isn't precision. by porlryan · · Score: 1

      With music a recording isn't going to change no matter how many copys you make of it, but with food or drink the flavour of each item you produce can vary significantly. Take beer for example, the water from the area of each brewery can alter the flavour quite a bit, the Guinness you drink may taste different to the Guinness I drink and so on. Which particular flavour would be copyrighted, all of them? What if the water in an area changes over time, just how often would a flavour copyright need to be updated?

  8. Subjective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People's perception of light, sound, etc are also subjective and colored by experience. The one aspect that's different is that food ages, but knowing that could be part of the formulation of the food. It's absurd to argue you can't copyright a food taste. It'd also be absurd to argue you can't reverse engineer a taste through lots of double blind, black box testing. If that's what happened, that should be the basis for overriding the claim.

    1. Re:Subjective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The one aspect that's different is that food ages

      Even that's not different. Pigments fade, bronze sculptures develop a patina, stringed instruments change tonality as the wood and varnish ages, etc.

    2. Re:Subjective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even that's not different. Pigments fade, bronze sculptures develop a patina, stringed instruments change tonality as the wood and varnish ages, etc.

      Except for the most part all those things you speak of have more to do with an original work of art than the mass produced copies. Yes, it happens with copies too, but you have an original master to compare against and to be different than the master in some substantial way is considered damaged vs with original art or food as developing character.

  9. Ummmm ... duh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's been known for a very long time that you can't really keep a recipe secret from someone with good taste buds.

    Take Gordon Ramsey. Yes, he's a bit of a dick ... but I've seen him make contestants on Top Chef recreate recipes just by tasting them. And they do.

    Hell, *I* can reproduce many recipes after having tasted something, a little googling, and a couple of attempts.

    A spreadable cream cheese and herb dip? You can find tons of recipes to make that, and some combinations of herbs are pretty common -- take Herbs de Provence, it's a well known combination of tastes.

    I'm glad to see some sanity on this decision, because if tastes can be copyrighted, that would be insane. We can all taste (well, mostly), and we can all buy those same damned herbs and spices.

    Imagine if some idiot tried to claim copyright on tandoori chicken or something. Or pulled pork. Or pretty much anything which people have been making for a very long time before some asshole lawyer tried to claim that taste it copyrighted.

  10. refrigeration better than eu at preserving taste? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    getting all the plastic out is a whole other story? cease fire stand down.. some still calling this 'weather'?

  11. Music taste are subjective. Lyric/song are not by aepervius · · Score: 1

    Lyric/song , text, video are objective. You can copyright them. You cannot on the other hand copyright the taste/feeling associated with them. You can't copyright the horror generated by some horror film scene, because it would be subjective by age/gender/culture etc....

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  12. Recipe copyright? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can't recipes copyrighted?

  13. No. Description, presentation can be by raymorris · · Score: 2

    The recipe for a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese is:

    quarter pound of beef
    Cheese
    mustard and ketchup ("special sauce")
    onion
    pickles

    That's either true or false. The recipe itself, the list of ingredients and their amounts, are facts. There is no copy right on facts.

    In a well-known commercial, the ingredients are sung in a certain order to a certain tune. That presentation of the recipe is an artistic expression rather than a fact. There is a copyright on that.

    If a recipe book has a paragraph describing the food or the cooking process in prose, that prose description may be copyright eligible. The factual list of which ingredients are used is not protectable.

    1. Re:No. Description, presentation can be by Eubeleus · · Score: 1

      And McDonalds ripped the special sauce flavor off of Big Boy's "Big Boy."

    2. Re:No. Description, presentation can be by desdinova+216 · · Score: 1

      I thought the "special sauce" was Thousand Island Dressing

    3. Re:No. Description, presentation can be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And McDonalds ripped the special sauce flavor off of Big Boy's "Big Boy."

      And both of them more or less ripped off and tweaked what is essentially tartar sauce or some evil thing sold in jars as "sandwich spread" by Heinz.

      Neither sauce is especially novel or original, and likely were stolen from someone's grandmother -- it's literally relish, mayo, mustard, vinegar and a few spices. Pretty common household things.

      As with flavoured cream cheese, mixing together commons spices, herbs, and condiments does not qualify as an invention.

  14. Trump will be most upset... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He wanted to copyright the smell of his BS!

  15. Copyright the taste of beef by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Screw you cows, I own your taste!

  16. Chickens ... by PPH · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... have a lock on all food taste IP.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  17. Why would taste be protected by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    When recipes aren't even protected by copyright ?

    https://lizerbramlaw.com/2015/...

  18. I disagree by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Here we've got potato chips with dill & chives. At-least two manufacturers make them but how wouldn't "a potato chips with dill & chives" be specific and objective? Sure you can argue the actual taste is more complex than that but if we compare with a patent it's easy. Then again I'm not sure just making all current recipe public property and any change onwards protected by copyright law as someones unique creation but I'm unsure I agree with their reasoning.

    1. Re:I disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here we've got potato chips with dill & chives. At-least two manufacturers make them but how wouldn't "a potato chips with dill & chives" be specific and objective?

      The problem is it would utterly fail to be an invention.

      How long ago did someone first combine dill and chives? Hundreds of years? Thousands? The Egyptians had dill 3000 years ago, and chives grow pretty much everywhere. People have been combining such things for a very long time.

      Seasoning a bloody potato with a flavour combination people have likely used for centuries in no way qualifies for anything which gets any form of legal protection ... because there is no way in hell you can claim to have invented it, or pretty much any other flavour combination people have been using forever. In fact, it's pretty obvious that they didn't 'invent' a damned thing.

      Recipes are just facts, and you can't copyright those (yet).

      Taking things that humans have been using to flavour food for hundreds if not thousands of years and mixing it with bloody cream cheese is hardly an 'invention' or 'work' deserving of anything like copyright protection.

      So, imagine some idiot trying to make a fucking patent .. a system and methodology for seasoning a potato chip with flavours everyone already knows about and have been combining since antiquity.

      What are you envisioning would be the protected work here?

    2. Re:I disagree by aliquis · · Score: 1

      How isn't an antenna design or the layout & shape of a controller or phone "just facts"? Then again they aren't protected by copyright.

      And I kinda feel like if someone make a new antenna now at-least as long as it's not revolutionary it's based on knowledge from antenna designs from before.

      Personally I may think patent systems are worse than what they are good though I'd admit they give a reason to take more risk than otherwise, then again that doesn't mean risk taking wouldn't had happened otherwise and that progressive development while freely using all other designs wouldn't had been better than trying to come up with something new while avoiding the old solutions.

  19. It's gouda news! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Can we get a cheese pun thread going, since the holidays are coming?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:It's gouda news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It feels like the puns would be a bit Stilton.

    2. Re: It's gouda news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck off.

    3. Re:It's gouda news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would gladly pay you Friday for a limburger today...

    4. Re: It's gouda news! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Fuck off.

      Oh, come on. Let us see that nice smile. Don't be such a grumpy gus.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  20. Taste isn't in the food, it's in your brain by maiden_taiwan · · Score: 2

    Taste is a perception, an experience involving food and a brain. It's not simply built into the food. You can easily manipulate how things taste to a person just by changing the context. For example, if you tell people that the same piece of meat is or isn't humanely farmed, it tastes different.

    1. Re:Taste isn't in the food, it's in your brain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taste is a perception, an experience involving food and a brain. It's not simply built into the food.

      Well, your taste buds are in your tongue, which is where the receptors are which tell your brain what it's experiencing in terms of the salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami.

      The chemicals that make up the food is actually intrinsic to the food itself, your brain isn't just saying "either liver or peppermint, can you give me a hint?".

      For example, if you tell people that the same piece of meat is or isn't humanely farmed, it tastes different.

      How that animal is killed has been proven to alter taste:

      The scientific basis for the phenomenon is well-established, and it's frequently been discussed as a reason to make slaughterhouse practices more humane. The key ingredient here is lactic acid: in an unstressed animal, after death, muscle glycogen is converted into lactic acid, which helps keep meat tender, pink, and flavorful. Adrenaline released by stress before slaughter uses up glycogen, which means there's not enough lactic acid produced postmortem. This affects different kind of meat in different ways, but in general it'll be tough, tasteless, and high in pH, and will go bad quicker than unstressed meat. (Lactic acid helps slow the growth of spoilage bacteria.)

      That humanely raised pig which could walk around, forage, be in clean conditions, and build up muscle tone and fat marbling over time with a more natural life and varied diet? It's going to be a superior product to an animal in filthy conditions which has been stressed and poorly treated.

      Don't dismiss out of hand that the humanely raised animal tastes better, and I won't discount that what you cite is a real psychological effect where people believe it tastes better just because that's what they've been told.

    2. Re:Taste isn't in the food, it's in your brain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Consider reading what the GP actually said before going off onto irrelevant tangents.

      * GP said the same piece of meat. From literally the other side of the knife.
      * GP is talking about the psychologically-induced difference "detected" when literally the only thing changing is what the observer is told. ie. The Placebo effect.

      A more reproducible version has been well documented with Wine: Take the same bottle of wine, pour it into two glasses, and tell the taster the first glass is a $1,000 bottle of wine, and the other is a 5 buck chuck, and they'll taste a distinctive difference, and prefer the more expensive one.

    3. Re:Taste isn't in the food, it's in your brain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not just that. Airplane food supposedly tastes very different if you get to try it on the ground. Even if served after precisely the same amount of time as on a flight and heated the same way. The noise on an aircraft and lower air pressure enormously affect how it tastes - or should I say seems to taste? AFAIK the effect is even taken into account in how food is seasoned by catering companies.

    4. Re:Taste isn't in the food, it's in your brain by maiden_taiwan · · Score: 1

      Well, your taste buds are in your tongue, which is where the receptors are which tell your brain what it's experiencing in terms of the salt, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami.

      My friend, you are about 10-15 years behind in the neuroscience of perception. Flavor doesn't travel from your taste buds to your brain and cause a reaction. Instead, your brain predicts the flavor based on past experience, well before any sensory input arrives from your tongue. If the input confirms the prediction, then the prediction becomes your experience. But they don't always match -- sometimes your brain maintains the prediction in spite of the sensory input, or vice-versa. This whole process happens in milliseconds, outside of your awareness. Google "predictive coding neuroscience" for more info.

      Likewise, when you smack your knee on a table, the pain doesn't travel from the knee to the brain. It's again a predictive process. That's why chronic pain exists: the brain predicts pain even in the absence of tissue damage, based on past experience, and the prediction becomes your current experience. Phantom limb syndrome works the same way.

      All your senses operate by prediction.

  21. Big Mac vs Quarter Pounder with Cheese by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I shouldn't have said "special sauce". It's the Big Mac that had "special sauce". The quarter pounder has mustard and ketchup.

    Special sauce (Mac sauce) is similar to Thousand Island, except special sauce doesn't have tomatoes or ketchup. Special sauce is:
    sweet pickle relish, mayo, vinegar, mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika.

  22. Zach Patterson/ZIP "Greatest Hits" (lol, not) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See how STUPID "ZIP" (Zach I. Patterson) CHIMP is (taking credit for what I solved before him) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he needs to LEARN TO READ)!

    I even SHOW ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he couldn't).

    Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no issue w/ null-term'd string bufferoverflows - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st loser.

    "I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... yet nothing to show in programs. I can from registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work (& 100k users worldwide too). He can't.

    LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

    Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

    Tell us about CODE SIGNING (which has been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

    APK

    P.S.=> Classic & HILARIOUS how STUPID you are CHIMPANZEE (descended from them obviously) - this makes my ALL-TIME FAVORITE for you dimwit - & every time you pull your BULLSHIT? Out this comes, lol... apk

  23. Re:Typical for the dutch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am sorry, if you've never tasted smoked cheese that is a loss for you.

    Yes, we Dutch do actually smoke cheese, it is pretty good.

  24. Secret Recipe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ever hear of a secret recipe? This is why there are secret recipes.

    If you can't get patent/copyright/trademark/whatever protections, then what you have instead are secrets. That's it. It's a secret recipe and nothing more. The OP found another company had reverse-engineered their secret, so now they fight it out on the open market.

    C'est la vie!

  25. What kind of idiot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...even considers the idea of copyrighting or patenting a cream cheese and herb dip? There's absolutely no way that a particular recipe or flavour could be an original work. It's all been done before ad infinitum in countless kitchens and factories. The IP legal industry has lost all sense of reality. Bring back the Commons.