Can you patent a recipe or cooking process?

In theory, yes, because a recipe is a composition of matter (new drugs are patented all of the time), but your patent application will probably be rejected by any Patent Office in any country around the world as your recipe is probably an “obvious” variation of some similar recipe that everyone else was already using. If you try to patent your recipe as a new method of cooking, you run into the same problem that your recipe could be considered an obvious variation of other cooking methods that other people have been using for years. Minor improvements to a preexisting method or composition are hard to patent, as trivial improvements are usually regarded to be obvious variations of an old device, and are not patentable.

Vietnam patent 

Not to mention the fact that you have apparently been selling your secret stuff for years, and public use or sale of a new product puts it into the public domain, and no one can patent it, ever, if it is already publically known (in the US, you get a 12 month grace period, but if you have been selling your secret sauce to the public for “years”, that sounds like you are past the 12 month deadline by possibly several years).

i would agree with the guy who said that you would be better off trying to keep your recipe a trade secret. Obtaining a patent is time consuming and expensive, and there is no guarantee that you will actually get a patent when it is all said and done. Simply keeping a trade secret, by contrast, is as cheap and as easy as keeping your mouth shut.

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