The scope of copyright law is set forth in section 102 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Part (a) of this section lists 8 categories of works that are appropriate for copyright. These include literary works; musical works and their words; dramatic works and their music; pantomimes and choreographic works; pictorial, graphic and sculptural works; motion pictures and other audiovisual works; sound recordings; and architectural works. A typical book would be a literary work and may also contain copyrighted pictures. But a recipe is not a literary work according to the typical use of that term, nor does it fit within any of the other categories.

For recipes, courts instead have looked at part (b) of section 102. This section limits part (a), stating, "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." In a case several courts have followed, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stop a publisher from selling a cookbook containing recipes that were taken from another publisher's book. Although this court stopped short of saying that a recipe could never be copyrighted, it reasoned that a recipe was more like the exceptions to copyright in part 102(b) of the copyright act, than it was to the covered expressions in 102(a).

The Sixth Circuit noted that some courts have approved of copyright protection for recipes in certain circumstances. In a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, a publisher had simply taken another publisher's book containing recipes, copied it with only minimal changes, and sold it with a new cover as its own publication. That case, however, was from the 19th Century, and involved the unauthorized copying of far more than one or more recipes. Instead, the infringing publisher had copied everything the author wrote, including not only recipes, but suggestions for how to plan and prepare meals, how to serve them, and other tips involving dining and entertaining.