Recipe Copyrights???

[5gBrewer]

Hi Gang...

Is it illegal for a brewery to use an existing recipe (that they did not create) to brew with as a guideline, then sell the beer?

Also, if a brewery is using an existing recipe (that they did not create), but they alter the recipe in slight ways here and there, are there any legal issues here too?

Very curious.

5gB

 

[ronjer]

I don't know if you can copyright a recipe, which is why KFC and Coca Cola are all secretive about their formulas. I do not know for sure, however.....Anyone?Bueller?

 

[olllllo]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=33827

 

[howlinowl]

I have somewhere in the house a manual about starting a brewpub. It's written by the guy who started Buffalo Bill's in Hayward California (can't remember his name... or the name of the manual, too drunk to get off my arse and look). The whole thing is about starting a business, and raising funds. About all he says about recipes is that there are plenty of good recipes out there (it was written in '93, before the net) and that you should concentrate more on your business model then worrying about creating a unique recipe. I imagine that you could take a recipe, tweak it a bit and call it your own. Who could argue??

Allan

 

[Drunkensatyr]

The same recipe could be brewed by every member of HBT and I would say that at least 75% of them would taste different than the original just due to different techniques. That being said, If you are brewing enough to go commercial, change the hops around a hair so you still hit IBU and tada...you have a new recipe. After all there are only so many ingredients out there. There are bound to be repeats on the market, but they still taste different.

 

[Edcculus]

Really all you would have to do is change the amount of a certain type of malt by just a little bit, or use slightly more or less hops etc. Most likely, if you copy a recipe, you can probably tweak it a bit to fit your taste anyways. I think this is why a lot of breweries are very secretive about the hops and hop schedule they use in certain beers, as well as specialty grains etc. You can reverse engineer a lot of a recipe, but some things are harder to figure out. Kind of like Coca-Cola etc.

If you figured out Coke's exact recipe and started a soda company called Loca-Cola, they would never be able to prove you copied their recipe. Plus, people are probably going to keep buying Coke because of name recognition.

 

[DeathBrewer]

all you have to do is change fermentation by a degree and it will taste different. srsly, there's no way to stop someone from cloning your beer and selling it

 

[RichBrewer]

I would think it would be very difficult to prove that a recipe was taken from another brewer. It is within the realm of possibility that 2 brewers could come up with the same ingredients.
As stated before, the beers would taste different anyway because of all of the variables.

 

[5gBrewer]

Thanks, Guys... All of what was said was what I thought; never seen anything that said otherwise.

5gB

 

[Buford]

Recipes can't be copyrighted, which is why soda companies and the like keep that sort of thing under lock and key as trade secrets.