for example, a recipe is a process, and not copyrightable, but the words used to describe it are; see idea-expression divide and "publications international v meredith corp." (1996). therefore, you can rewrite a recipe in your own words and publish it without infringing copyrights. but, if you rewrote every recipe from a particular cookbook, you might still be found to have infringed the author's copyright in the choice of recipes and their "coordination" and "presentation", even if you used different words; however, the west decisions below suggest that this is unlikely unless there is some significant creativity carried over from the original presentation. a sufficiently novel, useful, and unique (i.e. non-obvious) recipe can be granted protection under patent law.