Comment by _vertigo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _vertigo | Hacker News Reader

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Why would including a story with a recipe make a non-copyrightable recipe copyrightable?

Every recipe I can find on Google that isn't from a super-site with already strong SEO includes some sort of life anecdote. I find it hard to believe that:

1) This purported copyright trick even works, and

2) Everyone who publishes recipes online got the copyright trick memo, and

3) Everyone who publishes recipes online is interested in copyrighting their recipes as opposed to just having good ad revenue

I find it much easier to believe one of the following:

1) The life story section significantly improves SEO somehow, even if incidental. I'm not saying Google rewards life stories, but somehow there is a mechanism there that improves SEO, and people have cottoned on. Every recipe you're going find on Google has strong SEO, and hence every recipe you find has an SEO-improving life story attached to it.

2) Food bloggers include the stories for differentiation, to "build a stronger connection with their audience", and once a couple big ones started doing it, the rest followed.

3) Some sort of combination of 1 and 2.

Copyright law expressly does not cover recipes, because recipes are instructions on how to make a known product, and no lawmaking institution wants to criminalize Grandma copying a box recipe and giving it to her children and grandkids.

Photos and anecdotes are the common mechanisms used to make the recipe content copyrightable. Even physical cookbooks have these; they just seem longer on websites, because the format lends itself to more text-heavy presentation than a book, which normally has a full-page photo on one side and the recipe/short anecdote blurb on the other.

But don't take it from me, here's the FAQ from the US Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

> A mere listing of ingredients is not protected under copyright law. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a collection of recipes as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection. Note that if you have secret ingredients to a recipe that you do not wish to be revealed, you should not submit your recipe for registration, because applications and deposit copies are public records. See Circular 33, Works Not Protected by Copyright.

And here is the relevant court case, Publications International, Ltd. vs Meredith Corp. with the legal criteria:

> In addition, nothing in our decision today runs counter to the proposition that certain recipes may be copyrightable. There are cookbooks in which the authors lace their directions for producing dishes with musings about the spiritual nature of cooking or reminiscences they associate with the wafting odors of certain dishes in various stages of preparation. Cooking experts may include in a recipe suggestions for presentation, advice on wines to go with the meal, or hints on place settings and appropriate music. In other cases, recipes may be accompanied by tales of their historical or ethnic origin.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=182201036052136...

I suspect the "Recipe Life Story" nonsense was sparked by a highly-publicised (in SEO circles) study several years ago, which claimed the average #1 result in SERPs contained ~2000 words. This started a race to make every web page much longer than it needed to be. The obvious way to pad out a recipe is to add a phony, rambling life story to it.

Several Google updates later (and after much SEO-driven copycatting), it's difficult to crack the top 10 without ~1500 words of nonsense before the recipe.

This is why we can't have nice things.

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