You can’t take it with you

Intellectual property rights are generally not considered scintillating dinner conversation (unless you are an IP lawyer, and even then it’s iffy). However, discussion of that topic is becoming more common in restaurants – at least in the back of the house. The issue is becoming more prevalent in the age of celebrity chefs who often build a brand around the signature recipes they have developed. As chefs move on from a restaurant, they can run into friction if they want to take their recipes with them. The big question is whether a recipe belongs to the chef or to the restaurant in which he or she worked. As in most legal disputes, the answer is not always clear.

Even among chefs, opinions are divided. Some think that when items are stylistically linked to them, they should have the right to recreate that style in a new establishment. Others, like Los Angeles chef Vartan Abgaryan, disagree. “I was a person who was hired to do a creative job,” he says. “I got paid for that work. It belongs to them.”

Since copyright laws do not apply to recipes, there is little clarity to be found there. Trademarks only apply to names of dishes – Dominique Ansel might be able to keep others from calling their deep fried laminated pastries “cronuts”, but he can’t stop someone from making copycat versions of the pastry itself.

Not all chefs work to keep their signature dishes a secret. Tartine’s Chad Robertson is among them. He decided that he would put all of his recipes into his cookbooks. (The chefs that do this are my favorite chefs.) Robertson explained his decision: “Either no one’s going to care or a lot of people are going to make this … and it’s going to push us and keep us on our toes.”