This reminds me of the time when a HUGE recipe site...
...threatened me with a $150,000 lawsuit for infringing on the "copyright" of one of their Christmas cookie recipes.
I have to admit here, publicly, that way back in the beginning of my online Christmas cookie recipes I did *not* credit the original publisher of the recipe, because I considered it my personal recipe page, which was very small at the time, for myself only and that of my family, and I had typed it up from hand-written notes, and those personal notes did not include where the recipe came from. So sue me...(NOT)! So, up went a Christmas cookie page (just one page with about 20 recipes all on the same page!) as a part of my personal website. This was *many* years ago. We're talking 1995 here. I had no idea where this simple page was going, and was clueless over copyright issues, the Internet, and the fact that this page was coming up in search results at Yahoo. I was a very bad girl, okay? You might even say stupid. But not criminal. Of course over time that one page morphed into something way bigger, and now I'm making a profit on it (which I was not, then) and I am now very careful to credit sources and at this point very rarely add any recipes at all, preferring to add only recipes that are user-submitted and very original. Okay, I feel guilty about it all, can you tell?
So, anyway...one day in 1996 (or so) I hear from said HUGE recipe website (was huge and still is huge). They threaten to sue me for $150k for copyright infringement over Chewy Noels. ( *snort* ) Panicking, I looked up the law regarding this. Recipes are not copyrightable. 1. A list of ingredients cannot be copyrighted. 2. Directions and methods can only be subject to copyright if they are "substantial literary expression." I also found the results of a lawsuit on this issue which set a precedent. I told them all this, and did not remove the recipe. No response whatsoever from the HUGE recipe website. I was still worried. Then, knowing that this was one of my old, first recipes, I went through my very first Christmas cookie cookbook, one my mom bought when I was in gradeschool. There it was. Better Homes and Gardens. Chewy Noels. I wrote back to the HUGE recipe website. I told them in no uncertain terms that the recipe was not THEIRS in the first place, it was published in a BHG cookbook 20 years ago!!! How DARE they try to claim a BHG recipe as their own, and then threaten to sue ME over it!! I suggested that I contact BHG and they can sue us both for $150,000 each. Furthermore, I found other references to Chewy Noels online, attributing them to a much older Fannie Farmer cookbook. Did BHG themselves copy the recipe from Fannie Farmer? Was the HUGE recipe site suing all the 100+ websites who also had a recipe for Chewy Noels? I scanned the recipe out of the book, as well as the copyright page from the book, and sent the scan to them, demanding a response. Finally I heard back. They just told me that I seemed remarkably well informed and that we had better just drop it; however, they would appreciate a link to their site. HA!! I did put up a link, but to Better Homes and Gardens' book. Now, obviously, I am much more careful what I do. But...sheesh. To this day I really hate the HUGE recipe website. They knew very well the laws regarding copyright but were trying to establish dominance by intimidating smaller sites into removing their content by threatening them with outrageous lawsuits that could never stand up in court. Well...screw 'em.
Who's the HUGE recipe website? Well, I won't say, but if you speak French, the phrase "toutes (les) recettes" might mean something to you. ;o)
http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipes/recipe2.chewy-no%EBls.html
