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Cake copyright

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The Wikipedia logo is licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA) and is thus permissible to use for making cakes, such as this red velvet cake.

Cake copyright is the assertion of copyright on a cake. Cakes, as edible art, can be an artistic medium for displaying an image or portraying a character.

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If cake decorating is used as a medium for presenting copyrighted content, then copyright issues might come into play as with any other publication medium. Entertainment media organizations including Disney, Lucasfilm, and Sanrio have asserted that cakes should not portray their copyrighted fictional characters or their copyrighted images without licensing.[1][2][3][4]

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Cake design is an imagining of a cake as copyrightable art, like a sculpture.

Bakeries which provide cakes which critics have ridiculed for low quality have sometimes sought to claim copyright over their cakes.[5] The copyright claim is part of an attempt to enforce demands that communities of people who mock cakes not publish photos of cakes for entertainment.[5]

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In 2012, President Barack Obama of the United States had celebrity pastry chef Duff Goldman design a cake for a party celebrating his second inauguration.[6][7] In 2017, President Trump had a Washington, D.C. bakery[8] replicate Obama's cake made for his inauguration.[7][6] There was discussion about whether Trump plagiarized Obama's cake.[6][7] The matter raised the profile of copyright questions about cakes.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Morran, Chris (4 September 2015). "Disney, Lucasfilm, Sanrio Sue Makers Of Counterfeit Marvel, Star Wars, Hello Kitty Cake Frosting". Consumerist. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  2. ^ Ernesto (15 January 2016). "Pastry Shops Targeted Over Copyright Infringing "Star Wars" and "Minion" Cakes - TorrentFreak". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 15 January 2017.
  3. ^ Shirky, Clay (16 June 2005). "Copyright cops crack down on cooks over cakes". Boing Boing. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  4. ^ Gardner, Eriq (3 September 2015). "Disney Sues Over Edible Cake Frosting Featuring Marvel, Lucasfilm Characters". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  5. ^ a b Masnick, Mike (13 November 2012). "The Cake Copyright Is A Lie; Safeway Just Doesn't Want To Be Mocked". Techdirt. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  6. ^ a b c Siede, Caroline (23 January 2017). "The bizarre story of Trump's plagiarized inauguration cake". Boing Boing. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  7. ^ a b c Sanders, Cynthia Blake (23 January 2017). "A Tale of Two Cakes: Can Copyright Law Protect this Cake Design?". JD Supra. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  8. ^ Wang, Amy B.; Carman, Tim (22 January 2017). "Trump's inaugural cake was commissioned to look exactly like Obama's, baker says". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  9. ^ Livni, Ephrat (24 January 2017). "Do cake designs count as intellectual property?". Quartz. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
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