Tasteful Rights: Intellectual Property and its Roots in Food Heritage
Sybaris, an ancient Greek city in modern-day southern Italy, was founded in 720 BC by the Achaeans (one of four tribes that composed the Archaic Greek peoples) to cultivate more fertile (and flatter) lands. The city grew into one of the largest Greek city-states in the region, thanks to its agricultural success and open-gate policy for alien citizens. The prosperity of Sybaris allowed leisure time for hedonistic pursuits, which in turn led to culinary expertise and innovation, and which in turn gave birth to an early blueprint of . . . intellectual property law!
According to the Hellenist scholar Athenaeus, the city of Sybaris evolved a legal or administrative framework in which specific recipe rights were granted for a period of one (1) year to culinary artisans. As recounted by Athenaeus, “If any confectioner or cook invented any peculiar and excellent dish, no other arist was allowed to make this for a year.” Unfortunately, not much more is known about this ancient Greco-Italian system. In fact, the author’s information itself comes from Athenaeus’ friend, Phylarchus, who did not leave behind his own documentation—and other parts of Athenaeus’ works have been lost to the march of time, adding more mottling to the record.
Modern historians might compare this distant ancestor of intellectual property law to the present-day UNESCO food heritage system, which designates and protects specific regional areas and their cultural and culinary creations against misappropriation, but that’s all Greek to us here in American patent law.
Remains of the Theater in Sybaris Statue of Dionysos leaning on a female figure
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