Whose intellectual property is a recipe? Does it belong to the restaurant where the dish is conceived or the chef who came up with it? Most restaurateurs would like to think it belongs to the establishment that invested valuable resources into its creation, with some even thinking of their recipes as trade secrets. But if a recipe is a trade secret, should chefs be required to sign nondisclosure agreements?
The attorneys at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe discuss several cases that can help restaurateurs decide whether it’s worth asking employees to sign nondisclosure agreements. Here are some key takeaways:
- In order to claim that a proprietary recipe is a trade secret, any “secret ingredients” need to be sufficiently unique and the recipe cannot already exist in the public domain
- Keeping recipes confidential, and therefore potentially protected as a trade secret, means foregoing other potentially lucrative business opportunities such as cookbooks and public cooking sessions
- If you want to keep your restaurant’s recipes secret then you’ll need to require all employees to sign agreements acknowledging that unauthorized disclosure of confidential recipes could result in litigation
- Restaurateurs considering requiring chefs to sign nondisclosure agreements as a condition of employment should keep in mind that top chefs known for innovation are unlikely to comply.
