Only, these days, the model is so prevalent that liquor brands will tap just about anybody to be a brand ambassador. The bartender not only acts as an advocate but is also expected to create signature cocktail recipes using the product he or she is pushing. For those unfamiliar with it, it involves big liquor companies hiring bartenders to act as spokespeople for their brands. They tend to pass them on as an oral tradition.Ī big part of the problem, according to Freeman and other senior bartenders and mixologists, is the 'brand ambassador' model. But few bartenders publish their recipes. It's the reason musicians can't be sued for covering another band's song in a live show. The publication of a recipe can be legally protected, but the 'expression of an idea,' idea of the recipe, as the lawyers in the seminar explained, cannot. So, can a cocktail be copyrighted? In short, no. Yet we have less protection than anyone else.' 'There is an implied commerce to our intellectual property. 'In no other creative business can you so easily identify money attached to your creative property,' Freeman went on. (Fat washing, for example, the process by which a spirit can be infused with, say, bacon, was pioneered in part by Freeman, yet is often attributed to others.) 'Someone needs to get sued. After the seminar, I spoke to Freeman, who admitted he came up with the idea for the talk after becoming fed up with other bartenders and establishments taking credit for and profiting from his recipes and techniques. The panelists, Sheila Morrison from the Trademark Office, and Riley Lagesen, who has a private business law practice with a niche focus on the restaurant industry, discussed the nature of a bartender's creative work and who is allowed to use it. Last month, at Tales of the Cocktail, a week-long convention for the spirits industry in New Orleans, Eben Freeman, best known as the creator of smoked Coke and 'solid' cocktails at the now-defunct Tailor in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, gave a seminar on protecting one's intellectual property as a bartender. Freeman urges bartenders to better guard their recipes, a sentiment that contradicts the atmosphere of sharing many bars foster.

Everyone wants a piece of the big spirits industry pie.

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