Cake copyright is the assertion of copyright on a cake. Cakes, as edible art, can be an artistic medium for displaying an image or portraying a character.
Copyright of art on cakes
If
cake decorating is used as a medium for presenting copyrighted content, then copyright issues might come into play as with any other publication medium. Entertainment media organizations including
Disney,
Lucasfilm, and
Sanrio have asserted that cakes should not portray their copyrighted fictional characters or their copyrighted images without licensing.
Copyright on cake design
Cake design is an imagining of a cake as copyrightable art, like a
sculpture.
Bakeries which provide cakes which critics have ridiculed for low quality have sometimes sought to claim copyright over their cakes.
Presidential inaugurations
In 2012, President
Barack Obama of the United States had celebrity pastry chef
Duff Goldman design a cake for a party celebrating his second inauguration.
In 2017, President
Donald Trump had a Washington, D.C. bakery
replicate Obama's cake made for his inauguration.
There was discussion about whether Trump plagiarized Obama's cake.
The matter raised the profile of copyright questions about cakes.
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