Scot
Salad Dressing Empire
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
@UnrealCreative thanks for tagging me in this.
As @GradyS pointed out below, food products and recipes cannot be patented or copyrighted. So legally, you're free and clear there.
When you're creating any recipe at home or for mass production, you're not creating a new idea everytime. It's already been done. When I created my Ranch, I obviously used existing recipes and modified them to suite my particular needs.
If you really wanted to, you could copy someones ingredient list exactly, but have different concentrations of ingredients. A cake is the same ingredients, but knowing how much chocolate, sugar and salt are what makes it a better or worse recipe.
So, here's the big elephant in the room. I'm one of the few guys here on the forum with a food business and my wife happens to be a veterinarian.... I was hesitant to respond to this thread because honestly, boutique pet food brands are killing pets. Companies like Eukanuba, Iams, and Science Diet put millions into food studies and research, but brands like Blue haven't done any food studies (check their package, no claim of feeding studies) and have been responsible for many deaths and have had several recalls.
I'm writing this to point out, be careful. When we're talking about human food, if you make a bag of chips that is extra salty and has a weird protein in it, the harm is minimal, because your consumer might only eat a bag a week. But with a dog, or cat, this is their ONLY source of nutrition. So just messing around with ingredient concentrations for what sounds like a specialty diet is very very dangerous unless you have a very in depth grasp of animal nutrition (not human nutrition). This isn't a matter of tweaking ingredients to make it taste good, because you're probably not going to taste test this food. Its about serving a specific population and providing adequate and SAFE nutrition. I'd highly recommend you find a food scientist AND veterinarian (who specializes in nutrition) if you're going to start formulating this product.
Like I would make 95% the same ingredients in exactly the same quantities and will remove like 2 and replace with something similar. Can there be any issues in this?
The question is - can there be any problems with copying ingredient list?'
As @GradyS pointed out below, food products and recipes cannot be patented or copyrighted. So legally, you're free and clear there.
"The identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of food is a statement of fact…. Thus, recipes are functional distinctions for achieving a result and are excluded from copyright protection."
When you're creating any recipe at home or for mass production, you're not creating a new idea everytime. It's already been done. When I created my Ranch, I obviously used existing recipes and modified them to suite my particular needs.
If you really wanted to, you could copy someones ingredient list exactly, but have different concentrations of ingredients. A cake is the same ingredients, but knowing how much chocolate, sugar and salt are what makes it a better or worse recipe.
EDIT: To make It more clear, It's specific pet food.
So, here's the big elephant in the room. I'm one of the few guys here on the forum with a food business and my wife happens to be a veterinarian.... I was hesitant to respond to this thread because honestly, boutique pet food brands are killing pets. Companies like Eukanuba, Iams, and Science Diet put millions into food studies and research, but brands like Blue haven't done any food studies (check their package, no claim of feeding studies) and have been responsible for many deaths and have had several recalls.
I'm writing this to point out, be careful. When we're talking about human food, if you make a bag of chips that is extra salty and has a weird protein in it, the harm is minimal, because your consumer might only eat a bag a week. But with a dog, or cat, this is their ONLY source of nutrition. So just messing around with ingredient concentrations for what sounds like a specialty diet is very very dangerous unless you have a very in depth grasp of animal nutrition (not human nutrition). This isn't a matter of tweaking ingredients to make it taste good, because you're probably not going to taste test this food. Its about serving a specific population and providing adequate and SAFE nutrition. I'd highly recommend you find a food scientist AND veterinarian (who specializes in nutrition) if you're going to start formulating this product.