Intellectual property rights and the growing interest in legal protection for culinary creations

Taking into consideration the growing public interest for gastronomic experiences, I focus my attention on the intellectual property right claimed by chefs to protect their culinary creations. Analyzing the U.S. and Italian laws, I highlight the hardship of protecting recipes through the copyright law. In most of the U.S. cases Courts considered recipes mere statements of facts, while in Italy the Court granted protection to recipes as expression of literary creativity, rather than to their content. For this reason, culinary creations' protection remains an intellectual property vacuum, not covered by formal intellectual property laws. Subsequently, I recognize that not only the recipe, but also the dish itself, considered as a work of art, requires legal protection.