Can I patent a recipe? Whats the right procedure?

Question

We have this old family recipe from my grandma that we wanted to industrialize. What's the right procedure to protect my product?

I'm reading a book on how to right your own patent and i was wondering if I can use the regular procedure to write the recipe patent as i would with a machine patent

Answer 1

It would be impossible for you to prevent it from being in a magazine. What would you do, send a copyright notice for your recipe to every single recipe and food magazine that is in existence or will be? If you copyright it then all you could do was make a cease and desist, and by then you would be out of your goal.

Give it up. recipes are meant to be enjoyed and shared with as many people as possible.

If you really want to make it yours, send it to the magazines yourself with your name attached. but who knows maybe you inadvertently stole somebody else's recipe from somebody you don't know!  

Answer 2

No, you can't.

Patents are for inventions, not recipe's.

You can copyright a recipe, not patent it.

Richard

Answer 3

There are two things, one you cannot patent your recipe unless it is inventive, i.e. if you had a new way to make bread that had never been done before that would have vast commercial use because it was better than the state of the art.  You can however copyright this recipe, and if you plan to commercialize it, I would in fact highly suggest it.  Copyrights are easy to do yourself, and are cheap, you even get a $5 discount for doing it online.  Second, if in the the future you do ever find something you want to patent, I would never suggest trying to do it yourself, the patent world is very complex, and it is incredibly difficult to get a patent yourself.  I would propose using a patent attorney, or at least a patent agent.