What happens when creativity is both functional and aesthetic at the same time? The Supreme Court’s decision in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd., though rooted in industrial design law, raises a larger question about forms of expression that do not fit neatly within existing IP categories. Nidhi Jaiswal uses culinary plating as a lens to explore how copyright and design law may leave certain kinds of creative labour structurally under-protected. Nidhi is an LL.M. candidate at Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, with research interests in intellectual property law, particularly design law and non-traditional subject matter protection.
From Blueprints to Bistro: Rethinking Culinary Creativity After Cryogas
By Nidhi Jaiswal
Culinary creativity sits in an odd legal position. Chefs today do far more than cook; they design, compose, and visually curate dishes with a level of precision that often rivals traditional forms of artistic expression. Yet when such creativity is copied, plate-for-plate intellectual property law sometimes offers little in the way of clear protection. In an era of social media visibility and rapidly circulating culinary trends, imitation is easy, frequent, and often commercially consequential. Copyrightability of such artistic creations is questionable as they won’t meet the requirement of fixation with a sufficient degree of permanence. (See post by Aatmik Jain)
The Supreme Court’s decision in Cryogas Equipment Pvt. Ltd. v. Inox India Ltd., though not concerned with food, brings this gap into sharper focus. At one level, the judgment attempts to clarify the boundary between copyright and design law under Section 15 of the Copyright Act. Section 15 of the Copyright Act, 1957 delineates the boundary between copyright and design protection by providing that copyright in an artistic work ceases once it is applied to articles as a design and reproduced beyond the statutory threshold of 50 times. Beyond this point, the work is governed by design law, preventing overlapping or dual protection for industrially applied creations.
At another, it reveals how unstable that boundary becomes when applied to forms of creativity that are simultaneously aesthetic and functional. If taken seriously, the reasoning in Cryogas raises an uncomfortable possibility: that certain forms of creative expression may fall through the cracks of the current intellectual property framework altogether.
What Cryogas Really Leaves Open
The dispute in Cryogas revolved around technical drawings used in the manufacture of LNG semi-trailers. The central issue was whether such drawings could continue to enjoy copyright protection as “artistic works,” or whether, once applied in an industrial context beyond a certain threshold, they would be governed exclusively by design law. The Court avoided offering a rigid answer. Instead, it emphasised that the question requires a fact-specific inquiry, focusing on the nature of the work and whether its dominant character is functional or aesthetic.
This move is significant. It reaffirms the underlying logic of Section 15 that copyright should not become a backdoor for securing long-term monopolies over industrial designs. But at the same time, it leaves unresolved the harder question of how to apply this principle in borderline cases. By relying on a functional–aesthetic distinction without clearly defining its contours, the Court shifts the burden onto future adjudication.
This is not merely a technical concern. The functional aesthetic test may work reasonably well in conventional industrial contexts, where the distinction between utility and visual appeal is relatively easier to draw. But for works that derive their value precisely from the interaction of these elements, the test begins to look unstable. Cryogas acknowledges the complexity of such cases but does not fully resolve it. Instead, it leaves behind a framework that is flexible in theory, but uncertain in practice.
From Blueprints to Bistro: Extending the Logic
At first glance, comparing engineering drawings with culinary plating might seem far-fetched. One belongs to industrial manufacturing; the other to fine dining. But the analogy becomes more persuasive when we focus on the underlying structure rather than the medium. Both involve visual expression applied to functional objects. In Cryogas, technical drawings guide the creation of physical products. In culinary art, plating transforms food, an inherently functional object, into a visual composition. In both contexts, aesthetic decisions are layered onto utilitarian foundations, and those decisions carry independent commercial value.
There is also an important element of reproducibility. Engineering drawings are meant to be replicated across manufacturing processes. Similarly, signature dishes in restaurants are standardised and reproduced across multiple servings. The repetition is not incidental; it is central to their economic significance. A dish that can be consistently plated can be scaled, marketed, and monetised. Yet, it is precisely this repetition that triggers the concern under Section 15. Under Section 15 of the Copyright Act, 1957, “industrial process” refers to the application of an artistic work to articles through a method of mass or commercial production, whether by mechanical, chemical, or manual means.
It signifies reproduction in a commercial or industrial setting, as opposed to one-off or purely artistic creation, thereby triggering the shift from copyright to design law. The more frequently a visually distinctive creation is reproduced, the stronger the argument that it has been “industrially applied.”
If this logic is extended to culinary art, the implications are difficult to ignore. A chef may invest significant creative effort in designing a visually distinctive dish, only to find that its repeated presentation in a commercial setting undermines its eligibility for copyright protection. The very act that gives the creation commercial value, its reproducibility, may simultaneously weaken its legal protection. The point is primarily about the risk of interpretive stretch, not that plating clearly satisfies Section 15, its ephemerality weakens the “industrial application” analogy. Courts are unlikely to extend “industrial application” this far, as the provision presupposes durable reproduction in material form, which plating lacks. The threshold should lie where an artistic work is consistently embodied in reproducible, enduring articles, not transient expressions like food presentation.
A Gap Between Copyright and Design Law
The problem does not end there. Even if culinary plating is pushed out of copyright due to industrial application, design law offers little practical relief. Design registration is neither quick nor particularly suited to the realities of the culinary industry. Food is inherently transient; dishes evolve, menus change, and presentation styles are constantly reinterpreted. The lifecycle of a plated creation is often too short to align with the procedural and temporal demands of design protection.
What emerges, then, is a protection gap. Culinary creations, despite embodying originality and aesthetic judgment, may find themselves excluded from copyright while remaining effectively outside the reach of design law. This is not because they lack creativity, but because they do not fit neatly within the categories that the law currently recognises.
The difficulty is compounded by the functional aesthetic distinction itself. In the context of food, functionality and aesthetics are not easily separable. A dish must be edible, but its visual presentation is often integral to the overall experience. In many cases, the aesthetic dimension is not an embellishment but a defining feature. Attempting to identify a “dominant” character in such situations risks oversimplifying the nature of the creation. The value lies not in choosing between function and aesthetics, but in their combination.
Cryogas, in foregrounding this distinction without fully clarifying it, exposes the limits of the current framework. By reinforcing a strict Section 15 boundary tied to industrial reproducibility and material fixation, Cryogas indirectly highlights how ephemeral forms like food plating fall outside both regimes. The critique is not of the judgment’s doctrinal correctness, but of the structural limits of the copyright–design framework it faithfully applies. In that sense, Cryogas functions as a lens that makes the food copyright–design gap more visible and conceptually acute. It shows that while the law is concerned with preventing overreach, it may simultaneously be under-protecting certain forms of creativity. Culinary art is a particularly striking example, but it is unlikely to be the only one.
Conclusion: Rethinking the Boundaries
The Supreme Court in Cryogas sets out to clarify the boundary between copyright and design law. In doing so, it succeeds in highlighting the complexity of that boundary but also its fragility. When its reasoning is extended beyond traditional industrial contexts, the cracks become more visible. Culinary plating illustrates this problem vividly. It is creative, reproducible, commercially valuable, and yet difficult to classify within existing legal categories. The more successful such creations become, the more likely they are to encounter the limits of the law. This is a paradox that existing doctrines are not well equipped to resolve. If nothing else, Cryogas invites a closer examination of how intellectual property law engages with hybrid and evolving forms of creativity. Whether this leads to a reinterpretation of Section 15 or a broader rethinking of protection frameworks remains to be seen. But as things stand, the journey from blueprints to bistro reveals a gap that is hard to ignore and perhaps even harder to justify.
