Interesting discussion of plagiarism and intellectual property in recipes. I'm firmly in favor of keeping this a matter of norms not law, as frustrating as theft is for creators. In keeping with norms, my next book dropped a few recipes at the creators' request, even though we legally didn't have to (and some of the reasons were frankly silly). But it's hard to imagine legal protection of recipes that wouldn't be stifling.
Who Owns a Recipe? A Plagiarism Claim Has Cookbook Authors Asking.
U.S. copyright law protects all kinds of creative material, but recipe creators are mostly powerless in an age and a business that are all about sharing.
nytimes.com