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Users should be able to share FULL personal recipes. And there should be ways of monitoring new recipes (as there is with notes). And there should be a forum specifically for discussing those recipes.

I mean, I should be able to enter a recipe and mark the recipe as "publically available". 

I should be able to look at new "personal recipe" postings, as I can at "recipe notes".

There should be a forum for discussing those... asking questions, refining, etc.

Sharing a full recipe would break the author's copyright; it's highly unlikely that most members' personal recipes are their own creations, but rather recipes from books or magazines that have not yet been indexed or copies of recipes from friends' books or magazines (also breaking copyright!).

Under every indexed recipe on this site there is the question "Where's the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?"  If you click on this you get the following text:

"At EYB we love great recipes - and the best come from chefs, authors and bloggers who have spent time developing and testing them. We've helped you locate this recipe but for the full instructions you need to go to its original source. If the recipe is available online - click the link 'View complete recipe' - if not you do need to own the cookbook or magazine."

I feel that EYB's core purpose is to allow you to make best use of the recipes you already own rather than to become a recipe-sharing website and I would imagine that the publishers who provide give-aways, digital previews etc..  would be very unhappy if that were to happen.

Thanks FJT - you gave as good an answer as we could have done! We did not set up EYB to be a recipe-sharing site - there are lots of those already in existence. EYB provides a unique service not available anywhere else in the world - a searchable index of cookbooks, magazines and some online sources.

I really should have worded my ideas in a far softer tone. I tend to forget that while forums "feel" like chat, there is no tone of voice and the words must stand alone. My words were agressive, when I should have simply said, "I'd like to see..."

As a copyright and patent holder myself, I should have realized the intellectual property rights issues that would come with allowing recipe sharing, particularly being dependent on the goodwill of publishers and bloggers. EatYourBooks is right to stay far away from the issue.

Thank you, Fyretigger, for your gracious reply. I hope you find as much pleasure and utility  in EYB as I have.

While I appreciate Jane's note on EYB's mission, it may be helpful to clarify that recipes themselves (as a list of ingredients and preparation instructions) are generally not copyrightable in the U.S., although accompanying text and images may be. 

The below extract is from the U.S. Copyright Office, https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf:

A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the Office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish. In contrast, a recipe that creatively explains or depicts how or why to perform a particular activity may be copyrightable. A registration for a recipe may cover the written description or explanation of a process that appears in the work, as well as any photographs or illustrations that are owned by the applicant. However, the registration will not cover the list of ingredients that appear in each recipe, the underlying process for making the dish, or the resulting dish itself. The registration will also not cover the activities described in the work that are procedures, processes, or methods of operation, which are not subject to copyright protection.

Hi Nathaneal. I am very aware of copyright law on recipes - in fact I chaired a panel on the issue at a cookbook conference in NYC. Our reticence about sharing recipes is as much to do with respecting the hard work of cookbook authors as it is the strict legal definitions of what is legally protected. Just because something isn't illegal, doesn't make it right.

Imagine if you spent a year or two creating something which went on sale (so you could then get paid for all your work) and then on that same day a website put up all the content you had created. Add in all the work of the publisher in design, photography, layout, printing, distribution, sales, etc. Legally maybe we could try reproducing just ingredient lists and reword the method so no creative expression was reproduced. But what effect would that have on cookbook sales? And I cannot imagine any publisher or author would ever want to work with us if we were giving away their content. Part of our mission is to introduce our members to the wonderful cookbooks that are available worldwide - so they buy them and the authors and publishers get paid for all their work.

Copyright law is a fascinating topic. I considered (note the past tense) myself well versed on it, but this issue has brought up parts I was not aware of. Before retirement, I was a professional engineer. I reviewed and signed off on code copyright filings and software patents. I'm also a multiply published photographer, who has had to deal with infringement of my works, and non-exclusive usage rights issues.

I wasn't aware that recipes were not copyrightable. But I should have expected it. Formulas and processes are patented, not copyrighted. And a recipe is simply a formula and process for making something edible instead of steel, a battery or more timely, a vaccine. Unfortunately, while copyright (in the US at least), is automatic from the moment something exists in fixed form (printed, emailed, recorded, etc.), and relatively inexpensive to register, patents require extensive, expensive legal work. That's fine if you are patenting a way to make a great battery which will make millions or billions. But you can't very well aplly for 100 patents, 1 for each recipe in your cookbook! The filing fees alone, without the preceding legal work, would kill you.

So I am left with a little confusion. I remember an article from years ago about one brother suing another for infringement, when they had both used family recipes to create restaurants, and one had copyrighted the recipes. I think I remember the judgement being that the sued brother must change the recipe by 10%.

An intersting little black hole !! Circular 33 from the US Copyright office sepcifically mentions recipes as "uncopyrightable...but ....".. and there's a whole stream of recent articles in respect to chefs, bloggers and copyright in both the UK and USA ... cases  are detailed in this US article from a leading law firm! OK .. in my former life I was a defence barrister so legal issues amuse me no end!

I found two good articles covering the topic, and it does seem to mostly come under 'trade secrets'. If you haven't made an attempt to share it, then it might be considered a trade secret.

https://www.zenger.news/...eaten-chefs-restaurants/

https://www.twobirds.com...ghts-in-recipes-and-food

I found these while trying to find the article about the brothers (no luck).