Rights to Recipe Configurations

[Anonymous Modernist 4654]

I've only just begun working through Volume 1, but I'm taking a quick break to ask a question.

What rights do the MC team have to their new way of presenting recipes? Meaning, could another publisher be sued for using their formatting? Would it be considered poor etiquette? What of someone using the format to publish a free recipe online? Does the MC team care or would they be glad to see their method beginning to be adopted as an alternate standard?

This question is pure curiosity, but something I'd like to know going forward. I strongly expect to see this recipe presentation make headway (at least among nerdier publications) and want to know whether I should feel indignant on MC's behalf or glad.

[Anonymous Modernist 3093]

With regard to the legal question, I'm extremely doubtful that the format of the recipes in the MC style (as contrasted with the content of the recipes themselves) could be copyrighted. Copyright generally protects particular expression of information, not a pattern or template for arranging expressions of information. Trademarks and patents also both seem unlikely to work. (Not to mention that if MC didn't already start a patent application, the concept has almost certainly already passed into the public domain for patent purposes at this point.) I can't speak to the question of whether the MC team would find it to be in pooretiquette, but given that Nathan Myrhvold has made the point multiple times that the purpose of the project was to promote and expand the use of modernist cooking techniques, it would seem inconsistent to then insist that MC has the exclusive rights to a layout style intended to help with modernist cooking.

[Wayt Gibbs]

We are quite proud of the tabular style of recipe presentation we developed for MC. In our initial design studies, we investigated many different approaches to presenting recipes, ranging from traditional narrative formats to very graphical formats such as that used on the recipes in Cooking for Engineers. The final format at which we arrived combines, we think, the concision and ease of scanning of CfE-style recipes with the clear linearity of numbered recipes and the scalability of ratios, as used frequently in baking and championed by Michael Ruhlman.

We think this format is an improvement for many kinds of recipes. We hope that it catches on, and we encourage others to use it.