easily distracted, this time by patent questions

[lauradi7dw]

A woman named Deborah I Hartnett holds a patent for an "invention" that is mostly a cake recipe; in this case, one that uses only corn syrups (high fructose and regular) as sweetener. A lot of chemistry had to take place for this to be feasible, but I don't think she did that. She was working for ICI America at the time, which made sense to me because it's a chemical company, but it turns out that she was in the Human Resources department there, not one of the labs. So the first set of questions - was she filing for the patent on behalf of the company, leaving the actual inventor anonymous? Did she drop by at one of the labs in her spare time and actually do some lab work? Was this the result of messing about in her home kitchen but she wanted to make it sound official by using her work address?
Currently she seems to work at Temple University (in the HR dept) so I could probably just email and ask her, but even for me, that sounds a little intrusive. It also seems to me that the wording might be tough - I wouldn't want to sound like I'm accusing her of lying about who invented the suitable and satisfactory cake in question.

Second question - how many patents are actually recipes (or contain them)? In this case, the patent application includes not only the description of how to make a corn syrup only cake, but contains recipes and analyses of three control cakes made with sugar instead.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4250202.html

Comments

[ichseke.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that it's not possible to copyright a recipe, at least not the "algorithm" part -- the specific expression can be copyrighted, I believe. But that's not a patent.

I've got a patent lawyer pal, and in fact chemistry is his area of specialization, so I'll see if he can comment lucidly.

got an answer -- he said:

[ichseke.livejournal.com]

"It [patenting a recipe] does make sense, actually - I have patented a recipe for oatmeal. It involved using various machines to cut the raw oats in a specific way. You can patent a recipe if it involves steps (or ingredients) which are both novel and not obvious. For example - if you have a new recipe for making apple pie, which uses habanero peppers, the ingredients are not novel, but the combination MIGHT be. Even so, the question would be - is it obvious to use hot pepper in apple pie? I'm guessing a prior art search of New Mexico church cookbooks... would turn it up, or similar hot ingredients. Not patentable, in that case. My clients' oatmeal recipe - was really a manufacturing process cutting the oats in a way they'd not been previously prepared...

As for the actual posting - you can't 'file on behalf of the company and leave the actual inventor anonymous' - the law requires naming the true inventor or the patent is invalid."

So I would guess that there are a number of patented recipes.