This is the third post in a continuing series of posts about legal issues that affect food bloggers.

Are you afraid to comment on something for fear of reprisal? Do you feel passionately about something but fail to speak your mind because you are afraid of being attacked for your opinion? If not, then this post is not for you. However, I know from speaking with many of you that you have experienced some form of bullying online.

In my practice I have represented school districts that deal with this issue among school children of all ages. Guess what? It doesn’t stop when you graduate. Based upon the multiple emails I received on my Recipe Attribution post, I know that many food bloggers out there had strong opinions about the subject but did not feel comfortable expressing them. Why? Because they were afraid of being berated. They were afraid to offer an opinion. They felt they might be bullied.

Of course, some may hold back because they don’t want to offend the author of the post but that is the exception not the norm.

I dare you to post a recipe with a boxed cake mix and ask readers to comment on whether they think anyone should use packaged mixes in their recipes. In all likelihood you will see a deluge of people professing how they are appalled that you did not take a few extra minutes to make the recipe from scratch. Now, calling something where you used a packaged mix a “recipe” is something that might be up for debate. Do I think it’s okay to use packaged mixes? Yes, as long as they are not composed of artificial ingredients or flavors. That’s my opinion that I’m sharing with you. See what I did there? I shared my opinion. I did not say things like “How could you feed your family something like that?” or “Don’t you care what you put into your body?” Big difference.

For the most part, the nasty comments one might receive on a post are not illegal. They often do not rise to the level of an illegal activity like cyberstalking or cyberharassing. Nor are they something that would warrant notifying the Internet Crime Complaint Center. However, even though the activity may not be illegal in the eyes of the law, it can still be considered unacceptable by most standards.

Am I asking everyone to be nice? Yes. Am I asking everyone to agree with each other? No. We should have a healthy discourse, one where we respectfully disagree. I can’t tell you how many decisions by the court have made me want to scream “What were you thinking?” While I may feel that way I never say it that way. Whenever I write to the court, in support of or in opposition of something, I always close with “respectfully submitted.” I show respect.

A blog is an extension of of ourselves. It can be real and raw and when someone tries to intimidate someone it can be alienating. Sometimes it feels just like high school. I HATED high school.

I know there are those out there who are simply looking to drive traffic to their sites and will post whatever they think will draw traffic instead of revealing who they are. I want to believe that they are the minority. Most bloggers I know share their struggles both in and out of the kitchen. They put themselves out there to connect. When they are attacked with nasty comments or bullied for sharing their opinion it hurts.

If you are only talking to people who think exactly like you, you are essentially talking to yourself. That is what crazy people do.

Related Posts:

Trademark Infringement

Recipe Attribution: The Debate Rages On

Disclosure: While I am a lawyer, I am not offering legal advice. Posts on legal matters are intended to provide legal information and do not create an attorney/client relationship.

Photography is an art form. A photographer forms an intimate relationship with their camera and the objects that they are photographing. Time, patience and a sharp eye can transform a subject into something extraordinary. The photographers who participated in this month’s event are clearly artists who have excelled at their craft. There were 36 submissions. Each one tells a story about the photographer and the subject. I am so honored to have hosted this event. It gave me the opportunity to check out new-to-me photographers who I will eagerly follow in the future. Many thanks to Soma, Sneh, Kulsum and Barb for serving as our judges. They definitely had a tough and important job.

If you are not familiar with Does My Blog Look Good In This see my announcement post. You can check out all the submissions here and find out about our judges here.

Without further ado, I am pleased to announce the winners.

Overall Winners:

1st Place: Yelena from Cooking Melangery: Orange Sweet Potato Baked Chips with Thyme

2nd Place: Miriam from El Invitado de Invierno: Shaker Lemon Pie

3rd Place: Yulyan from Cooking With Love: Whole Wheat Banana Cashew Loaf

Edibility Winner: Pamela from Uno De Dos: Blueberry Lemon Cake

Originality Winner: Kankana from Sunshine and Smile: A healthy finger food from India

Aesthetics Winner: Noémi from Almond Corner: Chocolate Stout Cake

Host’s Award: Raks from Rak’s Kitchen: South Indian Filter Coffee

Thank you again to everyone who participated. The May edition of DMBLGIT will be hosted by Radhika of Just Home Made. Make sure to head over to Radhika’s site and keep an eye out for her announcement post. Hosts are needed for July 2012 and August 2012. If you are interested in hosting a future edition of DMBLGIT, send an email to Andrew with “DMBLGIT Host” as the subject line.

I am blown away by this month’s submissions. Well done everyone! Head on over to the gallery if you haven’t had a chance to check out the entries. The judges have a tough job ahead of them.

If you are not familiar with the contest, check out my announcement post.

After you are done perusing the gallery make sure to stop by and check out the portfolios of the judges for this month’s competition. Here’s a short introduction to get you started.

Sneh Roy -

I am Sneh and I cook, write, and tweet from gorgeous Sydney, Australia. I am a designer, illustrator,  photographer and food stylist. Cook Republic is my creative playground and memory keeper. It is my corner shop, a place for my food musings, a stage for the photographs I love to shoot.

The seeds of Cook Republic were sown in 2003 when I started a personal recipe database called Gel’s Kitchen. Blogging was an alien concept back then and I was using Gel’s Kitchen to record recipes that I cooked and liked. By 2007, I had started blogging and found it to be an amazing medium to share my culinary adventures. After nearly 6 years of food blogging on Gel’s Kitchen, I rebranded to Cook Republic and I am loving this new direction and journey.

Cook Republic is a very creative, colorful space smattered with quirky food props, beautifully designed cookbooks, fancy silver spoons, warm natural light, unusual teapots, gorgeous French linen and vintage cheese boards. It is where beautiful logos and illustrations for small food related businesses, events and publications are designed, food is applauded and photographed. It is where memories are made, one recipe at a time!

Website: http://www.cookrepublic.com/about/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cookrepublic

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cookrepublic

***Winners will be announced on May 1, 2012. Good luck to everyone who entered!

A dear family member, my Aunt Deb, has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.

I’m asking for your help. A search on what she should eat while undergoing chemotherapy reveals so much information it makes my head spin. With my aunt’s permission, I’m turning to you, my foodie community, to see if you have first hand experience with this diagnosis.

Nausea is a factor. She has been battling it with simple foods like yogurt, crackers and juice. We know eating whole foods, nothing processed, is important.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions. My aunt will be reading this post so feel free to leave some positive thoughts as well.

I am thrilled to announce that I am hosting DMBLGIT (Does My Blog Look Good In This) for the month of April! The submissions for this contest are always amazing.

If you are unfamiliar with the contest, the rules are quite simple. Enter your photograph by April 20, 2012. A group of judges that I have selected, who will be revealed later this month, will review the submissions and choose the winners for several categories. The winners will receive badges to place on their site.

Details for the contest are as follows:

Judging
Photographs are reviewed by a panel of judges, who score them in three categories: edibility, aesthetics, and originality. The host then compiles the scores to determine the winners. The specific things the judges will be looking for are as follows:

- Aesthetics: composition, food styling, lighting, focus, etc.
- Edibility: “does the photo make us want to dive in and eat the food?”
- Originality: the photograph that catches our attention and makes us want to say “wow!”, displaying something we might not have seen before.
- Overall Winner: top overall scores in all three categories combined.

There are three overall winners for photographs with the highest point totals in all three categories combined, and one winner in each of the three individual categories.

Rules
- Only one entry per person (a single photograph, no diptychs)
- The photograph must have been taken by you.
- The photograph must have appeared on your blog during the month of March.
- Entries must be received by April 20, 2012 at midnight EST (U.S.)

What do you have to do to join the event?
Send your entry to wendy {at} laphemmephoodie (dot) com with DMBLGIT as the subject. Please include the following:
- your name
- your blog’s name and URL
- your photograph’s title
- the URL of the post containing the photograph
- type of camera used, lens if you wish
- Please send photos in an attachment to your email in a jpeg format, of no more than 500 pixels in width. Photographs must be text free.

Gallery
All submissions will be posted to the April 2012 DMBLGIT gallery, which will be updated as I receive entries. Please give me a few days to update the gallery with your submission. Feel free to make sure your photograph is included once I start publishing them.

Check out last month’s gorgeous submissions and the winners at My Diverse Kitchen, the host of the March 2012 contest. If you are interested in hosting a future edition of DMBLGIT, send an email to Andrew with “DMBLGIT Host” as the subject line.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the contest. I will announce the winners on May 1, 2012.

I look forward to your entries. Good luck everyone!!!
~Wendy

*Please note that by submitting a photograph, entrants agree to their photograph being redisplayed and altered in size on the host’s page, the Picassa album and on the SpittonExtra DMBLGIT page.

This year the Bocuse d’Or USA competition took place at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. It’s a national competition where chefs from across the country compete for the chance to represent the U.S.A. in the main event in 2013 in Lyon, France. Up to this point I only knew what I saw on television, snippets and close-ups of chefs feverishly working to finish their dishes in the five and a half hours allotted. Each chef has a group of spectators there to support them. Between the music, the buzz of the press and the cheers of the spectators the energy was electric.

The event was named for Chef Paul Bocuse and is one of the world’s most prestigious cooking competitions. If you watch enough episodes of the cooking competition program Top Chef, you’ve heard a lot about the event. Chef Bocuse created the Bocuse d’Or to broaden the public’s understanding of the extraordinary dedication, hard work, practice and precision required to execute the very finest cuisine.

We arrived in Hyde Park on Saturday, the night before the chef competition. The commis competition took place on Saturday. Rose Weis, a current student of the International Culinary Center and extern at Gramercy Tavern in NYC, won the commis competition.

Rested and eager to check out the scene we arrived at the Bocuse d’Or USA bright and early Sunday morning. With my senses on overload we walked into the arena as the chefs were beginning to prepare their meals.

I may have done a little stalking. Well, it’s not stalking if you are invited to the event right?

I watched (stalked) Chef Boulud and Chef Keller throughout the event. I was fascinated by what they were doing.

To my delight I noticed that they were using their smartphones to capture images of the dishes. I assume this was to help them remember what they ate along the way.

How many of us have used our phones the exact same way when photographing a dish? Love it!

Chef Richard Rosendale of The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, won the competition. He will be joined in Lyon, France by his commis, Corey Siegel. The other competitors included Chef Jeffrey Lizotte (On20, Hartford, CT) who took the silver, Chef William Bradley (Le Cordon Bleu, Cambridge, MA) who took the bronze, and Chef Danny Cerqueda (Carolina Country Club, Raleigh, NC) who placed fourth.

Many thanks to KitchenAid for providing me with the opportunity to attend this amazing event.

©iStockphoto.com/Warchi

This is part of a continuing series of posts about how to keep it legal while blogging.

There’s a new message in your inbox from someone you don’t know. The message is titled “Trademark Infringement.” It looks like spam but you are not sure. You open it and promptly have a panic attack.

I am the owner of ____, the name and the trademark. You do need
permission to use this name. I am sure this is probably an oversight, but
please do change the name on your website by ____ to avoid
legal action, as this is a trademarked name. Please let me
know if you have any questions. Thank you for your cooperation.

What is a trademark? Our guest blogger today, Sarah Dares, shares with you the ins and outs of trademark infringement.

Welcome Sarah to La Phemme Phoodie!

Lots of people throw around legal terms without knowing their real meaning and some of the worst are from a group of protections known as Intellectual Property. IP includes Trademarks, Patents, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets. Each area offers different types of protection for different things, but can be easily confused. Generally, patents provide a limited term of protection for inventions, copyrights protect works of authorship, and trade secrets protect whatever it is the owner wants to keep secret.

“Trademark” is used to refer to almost any kind of mark used on goods and services, although “service mark” can be used for the second type. Trademarks identify the source of goods or services, distinguishing them, and indicating value and image. They can be a word, phrase, design, or a combination of those elements.

Federal registration is not necessary for protection, but does offer several advantages. Registered trademarks are considered incontestable after 5 years of registration, can be used for registration in a foreign country, can be protected nation-wide, and, most importantly, allow the owner to use the ® symbol. All other, non-federally registered trademarks can use ^TM or ^SM depending on whether the mark is for goods or services.

Trademark rights can only be acquired by using them – meaning, you will not be able to protect a mark without proving use. So, no, you cannot file an application for “Blue Ivy Bottles” in the hopes that Beyoncé and Jay Z send a check your way. Trademarks do not expire, so long as they are still being used in commerce.

Once an application is filed, you can expect it to be examined in about 6-10 months. The examiner will then either allow it to proceed to publication, or issue an office action. The office action might require clarification of the goods or services, or reject the application based on similar marks. The applicant can then respond to the examiner with amendments or arguments. You could do this by yourself, but it’s highly recommended that you use an attorney for this process – yes, attorneys charge by the hour, but it will be money well spent.

Once the application publishes, other parties can examine it and raise their own objections to its registration. The applicant is able to respond to these as well.

The process can be confusing, but the US Patent and Trademark Office offers a wealth of educational materials – these are your tax dollars at work, so use them!

*Sarah Galbraith is a food-loving, photo-taking, world-traveling, city-living, fashion-fascinated, Intellectual Property attorney from Philadelphia.

Related Link:

Recipe Attribution: The Debate Rages On

Are you dealing with trademark infringement issues? Were you able to resolve it without litigation?

This is the first in a continuing series of posts about how to keep it legal while blogging.

When someone copies a recipe word for word and fails to provide credit for the source it is pretty easy to accuse them of not providing the proper attribution. The line becomes blurred with a tweak here and there. When does a recipe become your own? What is the proper way to credit a source?

Well, let me see if I can help you figure it out.

From a legal standpoint, the expression or language of a recipe is what is copyrighted, not the ingredients or method.

From a blogger standpoint, it is generally appropriate to acknowledge the source of your adaptation or inspiration whether it is protected by copyright law or not. To be honest, I’m not sure that I have complied to date with what I have set forth below. When I started out I had no idea how I should credit a recipe. Now that I know, my intention is to comply from here on out.

Let’s start with the basics. A copyright protects “original works of authorship.” A “work of authorship” includes literary, written, dramatic, artistic, musical and certain other types of works. Copyrights are different from patents, which protect inventions. Copyrights are different from trademarks, which identify the source of goods and services, i.e logos and brand names.

The U. S. Copyright Office states the following:

Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.

Only original works of authorship are protected by copyright. “Original” means that an author produced a work by his or her own intellectual effort instead of copying it from an existing work.

In general, the copyright belongs to the creator of the work. If the work is a joint work, then the law assumes that each creator owns an equal share in the copyright unless there is a signed, written agreement that states otherwise. A copyright owner has the right to produce the copyrighted work in copies. A copyright owner can also license the use of the copyright in his or her works. Basically, the copyright owner retains ownership but lets someone else use the works.

Registration of the copyright is not required for protection. The copyright exists as soon as the work is created; however, you must register your copyright in order to sue someone for copyright infringement.

Is your head spinning yet? Have your eyes glazed over? Take a deep breath and keep reading. Here is how I interpret what is detailed above.

There are basically three different ways to note the source of a recipe which are as follows:

1.) “Adapted from” – where you are only making a few changes to the recipe. The recipe is recognizable as having been created by the copyright holder.

2.) “Inspired by” – where you make more than a few changes and the recipe becomes unrecognizable but you used their recipe in the creative process.

3.) Your own creation – no citation needed.

Play it safe. Just because it is not illegal doesn’t mean it is okay. If you want to establish respect among your peers provide credit where credit is due. As David Lebovitz pointed out in his extensive post about this issue, “When in doubt, always give attribution.” Cite your source and link back to the original work.

Let me know what you think about my interpretation. Do you feel bloggers should do more to give proper attribution or do you feel bloggers are too sensitive about how recipes are attributed?

Related Links:

Recipe Attribution: (Food Blog Alliance)

Adjusting a Recipe Doesn’t Make it Yours: (Will Write for Food)

Know Your Digital Rights – Recipe Copyright: (Saving for Someday)

Disclosure: While I am a lawyer, I am not offering legal advice. Posts on legal matters are intended to provide legal information and do not create an attorney/client relationship.

On Sunday, I headed out bright and early to make the drive to Washington, D.C. With only a few hours of sleep following my office holiday party, I was running on pure adrenaline and lots of coffee. What would make me drive to Washington, D.C. on a Sunday morning? The one and only Gail Dosik a/k/a One Tough Cookie.

Gail showing the class some of the cookies she has decorated

Gail announced several months ago that she was going to teach a couple cookie decorating classes in December and I signed up immediately. The promise of learning the craft from Gail was impossible to resist.

The class took place at the home of Cathy a/k/a Mrs. Wheelbarrow. This was my first time meeting Cathy who is just as lovely in person. If you are one of her readers you will also realize how lucky I was for the chance to meet Louie too. He was really excited to see everyone.

Even though I was a wee bit hungover I did my best to hold my hand steady. The other attendees did a much better job at steadying their hand than I did. Take a peek at some of the other cookies in the next picture. Our class was focused. I was really impressed by how inspired everyone was by Gail’s guidance and encouragement.

I would love to share better pictures of the cookies with you but they didn’t exactly last long enough for a real photo session. Did I mention my long drive home? Well, I think you can figure out how I kept myself occupied on my ride home. Can anyway say sugar rush?

If you are ever lucky enough to get the chance to take a class with Gail I would highly recommend that you do it. She definitely knows her craft.

Follow Gail on Twitter here

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