Message 1059 of 39188 in General Discussion

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> ...the answer to your question is NO.
> One way to keep it your signature drink is to have your name in the 
> title, so at least your name can be buzzing all over town....
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While I am not a lawyer, nor do a play one on T.V. I have to slightly 
disagree with this.
(excuse me while I ramble a bit here... I do finally get around to providing 
a solution at the end :-)
To a certain extent, the real answer to your question depends on exactly what 
you are expecting such a copyright to provide. If some form of "monetary 
renumeration" from either bars that serve this drink, or books that publish 
it, then there is little that you can do. Publishing your own book and clearly 
listing in it that you don't allow duplications of your custom recipes will 
help to a certain extent, but even there, it isn't cut and dried.
In the Trader Vic Guide for Bartending, he puts a little "TV" graphic next to 
any recipe that he originated, and in the front of the book he indicates that 
these recipes are "owned" by Trader Vic and cannot be re-printed without 
direct permission. From a "legal" standpoint, I believe this is enough to 
protect his intellectual property rights, but I am not sure what the results 
would be from any court battle that might ensue.
This situation is quite similar to the I.P. rights associated with any 
recipe. There have been cases where one cookbook writer has taken another 
cookbook writer to court for flagrant duplication of their recipes. This is a 
very tough situation to prove. Usually a recipe is "safe" if you change/alter 
one or more of the primary ingredients. But again, not being a lawyer, I'm not 
sure of the specifics here.
Such a situation would be even more problematic for something like a 
cocktail, which traditionally is not only contains relatively few ingredients, 
but also is often constructed right in front of the customer. It would be 
nothing for a customer to ask for a cocktail recommendation, the bartender to 
respond with something, and then mix it up. The customer then leaves, thinking 
to himself what a wonderful drink that was, and without any direct interaction 
with the bartender he comes up with a duplicate recipe and before you know it, 
it ends up in some cocktail book without any hint to its origins. You would 
have a very hard time proving that this customer knowingly cheated you out of 
anything.
This is however not to say that there is no solution for you.
Take Trader Vic for instance. As the story goes, he is the originator of the 
"Mai Tai" cocktail. There have been several other establishements that at one 
time stood up and tried to take credit for this, at which point Trader Vic got 
fed up and located the friends that he originally mixed this cocktail for and 
got a signed affidavit from them affirming that Victors story was accurate. 
This then essentially put the matter to rest, unless you want to claim that 
Victor got these sweet old ladies to lie.
If Victor had named this drink "Trader Vic's Tropical Masterpiece" how long 
do you think that name and/or drink would last? Other bars that served this 
would definately change its name, as well as perhaps its recipe, thus removing 
TV from the picture entirely.
Copyrights themselves are faily untangible things. There is no place to 
"register" simply a copyright. Just affixing "Copyright (c) 1999, Robert B. 
Hess; All rights reserved" to a document essentially results in copyrighting 
that information. If a conflict of some sort arises in the future, all that is 
necessary is to hopefully arrive at some sort of evidence that in fact this 
information was "published" in 1999, and everything else should sort itself 
out. For books and such, this is easy to do. Electronic documents are a little 
harder.
So... if all you are wanting is "bragging" rights, and some form of proof 
that you can proudly point at to indicate that you are the proud father of 
this cocktail recipe, here is what I (in my totally non-legal opinion) 
suggest:
Prepare a one-page document that names your recipe, lists its ingredients and 
preparation instructions, and have this noterized. Then proudly frame this at 
your bar, and encourage all of your customers give it a try. While there still 
are a couple of "doubts" as to Trader Vics story about the Mai Tai, had he 
done this, it would have provided irrefutealbe evidence as to the date and 
circumstances of this cocktails origins.
Myself, being highly interested in the origins of cocktails, I would highly 
recommend that you don't simply list the recipe out, but also prepare some 
sort of written information that informs folks as to the circumstances of how 
you came about this drink. That way, this story will have some hope of passing 
down through the centuries, and folks will look back fondly at the origins of 
their favorite cocktail.
...again, I feel obligated to note that none of the above information should 
in any way be considered legal or accurate advise. Isn't it a shame in this 
world of everybody trying to sue everybody else that I even have to consider 
stating this?
-Robert
 www.DrinkBoy.com