Chef Anne Thornton fired by Food Network after plagiarizing Martha Stewart recipes

E

erininny

Well-known member
Naughty, naughty!

Edited to add caveats:

1. All right, it's the Daily Mail, so even if this is true, I send a general "Boo, hiss" in their direction, because their coverage is normally .0000052% accurate, at any given moment.

2. A lemon bar is a lemon bar is a lemon bar. Likewise, German Chocolate anything (at least, in mainstream American baking, these days). However, if you are a chef and you are witless enough to overlook major copyright issues (which we've discussed at length on this board), or you refuse to hire people to do that for you, well, then, you deserve whatever's coming at you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102027/TV-chef-Anne-Thornton-fired-Food-Network-plagiarising-recipes-Martha-Stewart.html

 
I just do not get how common recipes can be plagiarized. I thought copyright issues arose

when others used the cook's instructions as their own....stealing the depth and detail that comes from the cook's brains and experience.

Unless the issue is that her show displayed/posted the exact Martha instructions verbatum, this is a tricky topic.

A recipe is just that...a list of ingredients. Otherwise there would only be ONE brownie and ONE peanut butter cookie and ONE cheesecake recipe. All others would be plagiarized.

I've got 10 binders full of variations on those themes that prove otherwise.

(Maybe they'll come after me next? I should start looking up recipes for cakes with files baked into them just in case.)

 
I've wondered about this myself, especially since I started blogging.

I always write my own instructions... and if I start from a single "base" recipe as a starting point I will use the "adapted from" caveat and provide a link.

I usually start by looking at anywhere from 4-6 recipes though, and then make my own by picking and choosing from what works in my head.

It's a tricky thing, I think. Especially with the internet. SOOOOO many recipes out there!

 
I'd argue that recipes are more than lists of ingredients--Peter Reinhart's pizza dough is approx. 8

pages long. There are maybe 6 ingredients.

The point is, if you're serious about it--and if you've got a show on Food Network, let's assume that = serious, for these purposes--then you need to hire someone who gets this. Even if you have substantially altered the recipe instructions to show that your recipe is not ultimately derivative and nothing more, if your list of ingredients looks almost identical to Martha's, you're going to catch flack for it.

For bloggers, eh, I feel like it's an ethical issue--if you don't understand how to quote someone else's recipe without violating copyright, you should research it. But it used to be unlikely that you'd get called out publicly for it--now, however, in the age of Google alerts, a smart chef/publisher/publicist will have a Google alert out for the chef name, book title, and recipe name, and whenever that pops up, will issue a cease-and-desist to anyone who copies and pastes vast sections of a recipe's instructions.

But I think Anne Thornton/Anne Thornton's staff was just dumb, in this case.

 
Agree...my wording was loose. I do feel it's the instruction that should be protected.

Not the list of ingredients.

 
So then, why isn't Martha Stewart guilty of plagarizing the orginal German's Chocolate Cake recipe?

Since hers is nearly identical to that one. Did Martha buy the copyright on it or something?

 
"Nearly identical." Aye, there's the rub. smileys/wink.gif

Every German Chocolate Cake since 1952/1957 (I've seen differing dates) derives from German's original. But Anne Thornton's staff made the mistake of copying Martha Stewart's rendering, not the one by Baker's Chocolate. It can come down to the order of the ingredients--I'm not saying that's morally/ethically the right interpretation; it's just copyright law. She didn't substantially alter them from Martha's text (or, more likely, Martha's lackeys' text).

From what I can tell, La Stewart's legal team has cleverly avoided getting sued by Baker's Chocolate by creating only German-Chocolate recipes that differ substantially from the original: hers are "Inside-Out German Chocolate Cake" and "German Chocolate Cupcakes." It's very difficult to argue, legally, that those constitute German Chocolate Cake. Well played, Martha.

I need a job.
ETA: (This last line isn't meant to be flippant, Richard--I just realized that I loooooooooooooooove dissecting and talking about rights and publishing stuff, and miss doing so.) smileys/wink.gif

 
Copyright issues are really sticky.

I've worked in publishing for over twenty years now (yikes!) and copyright and permissions is my least favorite part of the job.

But this is what has always stopped me from publishing a cookbook--I have a great idea for one, but dealing with copyright on recipes is just too much effort.

 
... ...

Dearest Erin

I know you, your integrity, your intelligence, and your hunger for literature. There is a job for you in NYC. You will find it.

 
If I had to take a guess, I'd think too many famous name recipes

makes one almost look like they aren't even trying.

When you've hired a team of people that are out there scouring the internet to find recipes to take and stick your name on, stealing from the well known doesn't make you the sharpest knife in the drawer.

 
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