From my experience - if you varied the ingredients by a little, it would probably absolve all copyright issues. Generally, you are allowed to take someone else's material and rewrite it and put your own copyright on it - as long as the original text was not readily identifiable. If you quote original work for "research discussion" or "news" purposes you can quote it pretty freely as long as you cite the source. This is called "Fair Use." However, if you copy too much of an article for commercial purposes, the author can ask for compensation. "How much is too much?" is a gray area. I think also that all newpaper articles are considered public domain as well as most US government publications. In Canada, the Canadian Government usually keeps the copyright to stuff they generate with our tax money and then often sell it back to us (except for a few free things from Statscan, but you must cite the source). This practice of the Canadian government is often considered an infringement of basic freedoms - as well as suppressing basic research and development efforts. However, I never said we lived in a free country.



The irony here is that if you cited Karen's book as the source, she might have a claim for compensation (the court taking into account just how much that information would contribute to your overall revenue generation). However, if you didn't cite the source, or say you put a range (perhaps gathered from some government publications, or your own "estimate" from what you have read ) you would probably be OK. There is a great deal of variation in nutrients just in the same plant families. Different grape varieties, when they were picked, etc., for example, can end up with anything from 10% to 50% sugar. So the nutrient content is often just an average. Some is so generic now that no one will contest the source (e.g., bread ~ 15 grams of carbs per slice).

I have also mused about opening a low-carb / natural food restaurant in Halifax. There are lots of good restaurants here, but low-carb choice is not outstanding. (It's not exactly the cutting edge of social reform here either.) For myself, I don't think it is absolutely necessary to even number the grams. Of course, Karen could just give you her permission and/or start a franchise operation.

1. Woodpecker is correct. Copyright protection of recipes tends to be weak because the idea of making, for example, green beans with almond chips is not protectable and because there are only so many ways to express a recipe for such dish. Copying ingredient-for-ingredient, amount-for-amount is forbidden. But in general copyright protection of recipes has inherent limits and is not strong.

The number of carbs is an empirical fact that derrives from the ingredients. I would think that the expression of those is in a limited number of ways and not enjoying strong protection.

Consult an attorney if you like, but I would not spend much time on it.

2. The bigger issue is your idea of opening a "different kind of low carb store." It will die. The gigantic food stores will make such store a subset of their own if you meat with success. Margins are thin in the retail business. I would encourage you to reconsider and not to live up to your name. The bottomline is that even the most devout low carbers do not really want to make a second stop in the grocery routine and your pricing will never give you the leverage to become the destination store for thousands of shoppers.