LSAT 149 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q18

RC Question 18 Explanation

DISCUSSION: Comedians and copyright law had the following relationship:

1. Comedians could copyright their material.
2. But joke copyright is difficult and expensive to enforce.
3. So in practice comedians don’t use copyright law.

So we need something that chefs have access to, but don’t use. I reread the first paragraph to find this. The third sentence says that trade secrets could protect recipes, but chefs don’t use them.

It’s worth looking back to the passage to answer a question. You only really need to reread paragraph 1, as paragraph 2 is merely a description of the social norms chefs do use. This answer is about something chefs don’t use, so that could only be in paragraph 1.

___________

1. The first sentence of passage B says that recipes are not effectively covered by intellectual property law. So on this point cooking is different from comedy: jokes are copyrightable. It’s true that comedians don’t use copyright much, but that’s because enforcement is difficult. Legal coverage, by contrast, is adequate.
    
   Whereas recipes are not covered by patents and copyright. Only trade secrecy offers any protection at all.
2. The second sentence of passage B says that recipes generally aren’t patentable. Whereas in comedy, jokes are copyrightable.
3. Jokes are copyrightable. The start of passage B says that the combination of ingredients in a recipe is not copyrightable.
4. CORRECT. See the discussion above. Trade secrecy is available to chefs, but they don’t use it. This is the same situation comedians face: copyright is available to them, but they don’t use it.
5. Chefs do use social norms. Whereas comedians don’t use copyright protections. So this doesn’t match.