Intellectual property on food platter? Proofis in the pudding

While some restaurants abroad have successfully protected their recipes, prior art can prove to be a hurdle in patenting innovative cuisine

Dipender Tiwari, executive chef at Qla restaurant in Mehrauli, says he is constantly on the lookout for new native ingredients to come up with unique dishes at the restaurant. He says he sometimes spends months developing and perfecting the look and feel of his dishes.

When asked if his any creation is protected by law, Tiwari says he does not know the legal process of protecting his creations in the food industry.

Safir Anand, senior partner at Anand and Anand, explains there are many reasons why patenting is not rampant in the food industry for plating techniques. "One of the main reasons is that it is extremely tough to beat the concept of prior art to be able to secure a patent," he says.

Simply put, prior art means knowledge or information already available in the public domain and to secure a patent, one of the primary requirements is that the new cuisine should be inventive.

The law defines a new invention as "...any invention or technology which has not been anticipated by publication in any document or used in the country or elsewhere in the world before the date of filing of a patent application with complete specification, i.e., the subject matter has not fallen in the public domain or that it does not form part of the state of the art;..." However, this does not mean that a unique curation cannot be protected by law, although it's a tough task. Some of the options that can be considered are copyright protection, design protection, and even trade dress protection, although even here many criteria need to be met before being considered for protection.