From leading chefs in the hottest restaurants to apple pie-baking grandmas, cooks have always had a thing about protecting their prized recipes. Now, some of the world's top chefs are adding a new ingredient to their protection recipe: patents.

As Food & Wine contributing editor Pete Wells explains in the magazine's latest issue, avant-garde Chicago chef Homaro Cantu is leading the way. Cantu has patents pending on 12 of his inventions, including his razor-thin cotton candy paper — which is served to diners in his Moto restaurant with the copyright notice printed right on the edible paper. Yum!

Recipe protection is spilling over, as well, into the copyright space. Steven Shaw, co-founder of the online culinary site egullet, is spearheading development of a model that would allow chefs to copyright signature dishes. And where does Wells see this heading?

"People who sweat over new ideas deserve compensation," writes Wells. "And there's a sense in which rewriting the copyright code to include food seems like the ultimate acknowledgment that chefs have arrived...

"The trouble, as even Shaw will admit, is that many chefs don't like the idea. Even Grant Achatz, who says that the [Australian restaurant] Interlude Web site showed 17 dishes he invented, is against a copyright system for food. 'Chefs won't use it,' Achatz says. 'Can you imagine [renowned American chef] Thomas Keller calling me and saying, 'Grant, I need to license your Black Truffle Explosion so I can put that on my menu'?"

It seems this debate will need to simmer a bit. In the meantime, is it lunchtime yet?
— Suzanne Stevens

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