When selling baked goods, do you have to use your own recipes, or can you use someone else's? For example, if I want to sell cakes using the WASC recipe, am I legally allowed to do that, or do I have to get permission from the person who came up with the recipe? What about family recipes? My dh's aunt has a couple REALLY good recipes I would like to use, but I want to make sure everything is legal.
Thanks for your help with this.

Becca

You can use any recipe you like, you just can't publish it claiming it to be your original recipe. Unless you tell someone, or make a specific claim, no one can prove what recipe you may have used.

In California, it does have to be prepared in a licensed kitchen.

You may use whatever recipes you wish and just an fyi I went to culinary school and they told us if you have changed just on thing in the recipe ie: used heavy cream instead of half and half the recipe is now yours. I have lots of recipes from my chefs and some i use as they are and others i have made my own.

hth

A list of ingredients canât be copyrighted, so you can use / call your own / republish any recipe you like. What you canât republished are the literary directions/instructions associated with a recipe. The recipe directions can be copyrighted by the author, but the list of ingredients can not.

I have links to some legal sites which explain in great detail what can be copyrighted/trademarked and what can not. I will try and find them and post the links.

Thank you
JoannB, I am unfortunately well aware of CA's laws . We just moved here from OR and I would love to be able to get my own kitchen licensed, but no such luck . I'm not good enough to sell yet anyway, but I'm working on it

Becca

Here is a link about recipes and copyrights:

http://www.recipezaar.com/help/view?iid=44