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Has this happened to any of you? How do you feel about it?
Happens to me all the time. I consider imitation the highest form of flattery, and as long as someone's using the original drink name and the original intent, I couldn't care less if my name was attached to it or not.
However, if there was someone out there making a lot of money by touting one of my drinks as their own, I might get a little sniffy. But drink authors own their drinks less and less as they permeate through the culture, and I feel they sort of become public domain.
Sometimes you've got to let your baby leave the nest. I heard someone in Texas was pushing an innovative new cocktail called a Richmond Gimlet, and I just sat back and smiled with quiet pride.
The blogosphere can be fairly loose regarding attribution. Personally, I think it appropriate and polite to attribute sources. If I don't, I've overlooked or not researched, and I expect someone to inform me what I've forgotten. But I want to see the lines of influence as a recipe moves through the culture, I hope it illuminates a new geography of information.
Attribution on a cocktail menu might be difficult to do, being not the kind of information that the reader expects to receive.
The U.S.Copyright Office would tell us,
Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an explanation or directions, or when there is a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook, there may be a basis for copyright protection.
Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to names, titles, short phrases, ideas, systems, or methods.
Homaro Cantu may want to change that, or invoke patent law.
Jeff, the first time I had the Richmond Gimlet, the bartender Jacob (at Lava Lounge) gave me the full story and gave you full credit. I can't even name how many places have that on their drink menu in Eugene. I'd say that is indeed quite flattering.
Hell, I'm putting the Richmond Gimlet on the next menu & telling everyone Jeff stole it from me.
That said, I firmly believe we're going to have a lot more unattributed purloining going on, as the standards for cocktail production get more rigorous in the next few years (& I'm hoping the OBG has something to do with that). There does, in fact, seem to be very little we can do to prevent it, with the exception of peer pressure. This is one of the things I'd like to see us doing as the guild progresses, being a resource for accountability. When we spot it, or can determine this sort of behavior, I think it's our obligation to make a squawk about it. It's all too easy for folks to copy a recipe w/o being caught by patrons, & when it does occur, the establishment or individual should be notified.
Now when someone steals a style of production, I tend to think of that as flattery.
I'm sure we all agree that providing attribution is always a good thing, there are sometimes however when it is not an option.
As mentioned earlier menus rarely provide attribution, although frankly I think it can be a good thing especially if a small collection of bars are sharing recipes back and forth and providing attribution as a way of enforcing a "community" feeling amongst them. Might sound counter-intuitive at first, but this can be a good way to help business. Another issue some times is that several of the cocktail guides out there have what could be considered a "no frills" approach to their recipe listings, and don't provide attribution for any of their cocktails. Mr. Boston's is one of these. There are a good handful of modern-era recipes listed in the new edition, but I wasn't able to get them to add attributions because of their policy. In my new book I went the other direction and have not only attributions for every single drink that I can, but in many cases even added comments from the originator about the drink.
-Robert
As a distiller, I provide recipes to consumers and publications that bartenders have graciously given me, with attribution. Recently a New York based spirits writers wrote a nice story about my spirits, but use the recipes provided without attribution, which kinda cheesed me. It was nice to have been noticed, but as nice would have been to have the original source of the recipe acknowledged. On my web site, I do provide attribution for all my recipes. But as Mr. Hess said, it isn't always possible to provide source info, which is too bad.
http://spiritsnotebook.blogspot.com/2008/02/sub-rosa-vodkas-quietly-making-their.html
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