# Food Network drops chef Anne Thornton -plagiarism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 16, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061 "2012-02-16T20:00:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/1 "2012-02-16T20:00:10Z")
I don’t get this at all. How many ways can you make a chocolate chip cookie or a lemon bar? Heck most chocolate chip cookies are based on the famous Toll House Cookie recipe with just minor tweaks. Go to [allrecipes.com](http://allrecipes.com) and compare cookie recipes. One lemon bar recipe looks pretty much like another I can’t see humiliating and destroying someones professional reputation with this flimsy of evidence. Food Network could have simply not renewed her show without any public comments. > **[Food Network Star Reportedly Fired For Recipe Plagiarism](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/anne-thornton_n_1281997?ref=food)** > > Food Network Star Reportedly Fired For Recipe Plagiarism > [@](#): > > “The network was very concerned because many of her recipes were close, with only a few minor edits, to other chefs’ recipes,” a source close to the production said Wednesday. > > Among the sweet sensations that raised eyebrows were the frosting for Thornton’s German Chocolate Cupcakes, a near replica of Martha Stewart’s 2009 Coconut-Pecan Frosting recipe, give or take a handful of pecans and a dollop of butter. > > And the New York pastry chef’s Luscious Lemon Squares were very similar to a 1999 recipe from Ina Garten, also known as the Barefoot Contessa. > > A recipe Thornton cooked up for Mascarpone-Stuffed French Toast closely mimicked one published in 2006 in the cookbook “The Essence of Chocolate.” A side-by-side comparison of those two recipes shows Thornton added orange zest to the mix and topped hers with strawberry, rather than maple syrup. [http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/02/16/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-for-allegedly-plagiarizing-martha-stewart/](http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/02/16/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-for-allegedly-plagiarizing-martha-stewart/) > [@](#): > > Recipe attribution is tricky business – the copyright laws on the topic are notoriously vague, with legal infringments often hinging on the actual phrasing of instructions rather than a list of ingredients. For that reason, even high-profile recipe plagiarists have gotten off scot-free in the past. But a TV chef is certainly supposed to be held to a higher standard of culinary originality to a normal person. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/2 "2012-02-16T20:28:03Z")
According to the informal rules, if you make three _substantive_ changes to a recipe you can call it yours. Adding a handful of nuts or subbing strawberry for maple doesn’t meet that “standard.” Plus, Foof Network is getting kinda gun-shy after some of their previous “scandals.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/3 "2012-02-16T20:45:56Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > [http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/02/16/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-for-allegedly-plagiarizing-martha-stewart/](http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/02/16/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-for-allegedly-plagiarizing-martha-stewart/) > > > [@](#): > > > > Recipe attribution is tricky business – the copyright laws on the topic are notoriously vague, with legal infringments often hinging on the actual phrasing of instructions rather than a list of ingredients. For that reason, even high-profile recipe plagiarists have gotten off scot-free in the past. But a TV chef is certainly supposed to be held to a higher standard of culinary originality to a normal person. This seems to me to be an unnecessarily equivocating description of the law. You can’t exercise copyright protection for recipes or lists of ingredients. But you can exercise copyright protection in creative, original expression regarding recipes, provided that the expression isn’t necessary to express the ideas embodied in the recipe. ---
**Author:** ![corkboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/4 "2012-02-17T13:33:01Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > \ Plus, \*\*Foof \*\*Network … Heh. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/5 "2012-02-17T15:32:08Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > This seems to me to be an unnecessarily equivocating description of the law. > > You can’t exercise copyright protection for recipes or lists of ingredients. But you can exercise copyright protection in creative, original expression regarding recipes, provided that the expression isn’t necessary to express the ideas embodied in the recipe. My WAG is that their issue was (or should have been) more of a moral/fairness sense of “plagiarism” rather than a legal sense. In other words, allegedly firing her for allegedly being an uncreative, lazy cookbook writer. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/6 "2012-02-17T15:38:03Z")
Food Network is getting worse and worse, so much so that I’ve pretty much stopped watching, but this seems like more idiocy on the face of it. As stated above, recipes/list s of ingredients are not copyrightable, nor should they be. Look up recipes for a particular style of bread, say, and you will find pretty much exactly the same list: flour, salt, water, yeast, and very likely similar, if not identical proportions. With desserts and pastries (as in this show, which I’ve never watched), there is going to be a hell of a lot of overlap with other recipes, as these types of recipes are generally more sensitive to ingredient proportions than others. I don’t go to cookbooks or watch cooking shows expecting recipes to be original creations of the authors/chefs. I do so because I trust the author’s tastes, their research, their ability to explain the important characteristics of the dish being served, maybe a little of its history and variations, and that sort of thing. If the author is using some non-obvious ingredient in the cooking, I appreciate an attribution to where they got the idea from, but that’s about it. A ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/7 "2012-02-17T15:44:01Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > My WAG is that their issue was (or should have been) more of a moral/fairness sense of “plagiarism” rather than a legal sense. In other words, allegedly firing her for allegedly being an uncreative, lazy cookbook writer. There’s an interesting phenomenon in comedy. The concept of a joke is not protected by copyright law. But, if a comedian “steals” a joke idea, then the comedy community has ways of punishing that person. I think that is perfectly valid. It’s a similar situation in the academic community. You can be accused of “plagiarism” by “stealing” another person’s ideas. This is a completely privately enforced standard, because, of course, copyright law doesn’t protect ideas, only expression. If the “celebrity chef community” has established a community standard that says that it is “stealing” to use a recipe from another chef’s book without making at least two major changes, then to me it is perfectly valid for the Food Network to accept that standard and enforce it, as a member of that community. But, just as with comedy, it has nothing to do with copyright law. ---
**Author:** ![vd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b19c9b/32.png) [@vd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vd)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2013, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/food-network-drops-chef-anne-thornton-plagiarism/613061/9 "2013-08-23T10:23:37Z")
> [@jack05key](#): > > but … not working please reported