I notice that in lots of grocery stores you have a lot of products that are obvious and straight up knock offs of famous brands.
Take for instance, Oreo’s. There are dozens of nearly identical cookie products that are not actually Oreo’s. Or hand candied shell chocolates that look just like M&M’s but are not actually officially that brand.
And then of course, you have the countless number of cheaper cereal knock offs that come in the forms of bags.
Not that I mind these knock off products, as I think having choices is great for the consumer and they are sometimes better than the original.
I am just curious as to how copy right infringement works with brand food products. Is it only for the name? To what extent can a company protect its recipe?
Copyright has nothing to do with food products. A brand name, such as Oreo, is a registered TradeMark. You can make and market any product you want, as long as you don’t infringe on someone elses TradeMark.
Some aspects, such as Coca-Cola’s “secret formula” may be considered trade secrets, and are protected as such, and some non-food products may be subject to patents, but that is a separate issue.
However … you *can *copyright a particular *expression *of a recipe. So if, for example, if you wrote a cookbook I can’t just Xerox it and sell copies. But if I went through and rewrote the instructions for each dish in my own language, you wouldn’t have any recourse.
The example of this is in candies. Hershey wanted to buy up Heath Bars and sell them, but Heath refused. So Hershey manufactured Skor, which were designed to be pretty much the same thing (the recipe for toffee and chocolate are no secrets). Heath couldn’t stop them. Eventually, Hershey did manage to buy Heath, but they’re still making both brands.
It’s similar in broad concept to trademark, as it is ultimately a consumer protection law, but it is not quite the same.
The final ways to protect a product are patents and trade secrets. So far as I know, this only comes into play if you’ve invented some new way to do something: The patent gives you a temporary monopoly on using your method in exchange for revealing your invention publicly (the word ‘patent’ derives from the Latin word patentum, ‘to lay open’) as opposed to keeping it a trade secret.
A trade secret is protected by making everyone who works for you sign a contract wherein they promise to not reveal any of your business secrets to the outside world. In theory, they can last forever. However, contracts are generally not binding on people who have not signed them, so if your competitor figures out how you do it without spying, your secret is lost and you can’t do anything to stop them from copying you. (If they did spy, you can get the courts to force them to stop. Industrial espionage is a serious concern in some industries.)
The most famous trade secret is probably the precise formula for Coca-Cola, so the concept does apply to the food world. Note, however, that this doesn’t do anything to stop any of the other colas from existing in the same markets. However, they can’t call themselves ‘Coca’ or use the red-and-white scheme in their design due to trademark law.
FYI “trademark” is a single word and at least in US legal use doesn’t have a uppercase T, and especially doesn’t have (ever) an uppercase M in the middle.
Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
While it’s possible to patent a recipe, in practice, it’s very difficult to do. You can’t prevent the knockoffs the trademark would help prevent confusion
For instance, Oreos and Hydrox, which are similar but different in name and it’s clear when you buy one, you’re not getting the other.
However if you made a knockoff of an Oreo and called it Oreoreos, you’d find yourself in trouble in a second because Oreoreos is to close to Oreos
Hydrox can no longer be “the other”. They went out of production many years ago and, except for a brief “centennial” revival, are in the cookie version of dodo-land. (This is my nitpick of the week. Just made it under the wire!)
When Keebler took over the failing Sunshine, they figured that was exactly the problem, so they renamed them “Droxies”. Which sold even worse, possibly because it sounds like a recreational drug that went out of fashion in the 70s.