Nisha Vora and Copyright Issues Relating to Food

Nisha Vora was raised in Barstow, California by her parents who emigrated to the United States from India in the early 1980s. Like many Indian families, she grew up eating mostly home cooked meals, a majority of which were vegetarian, but she felt a disconnect with Indian food and resisted her mom’s cooking. Nisha described her mom as, “an excellent cook, but as a picky child living in a culture that viewed Indian food as too smelly and too spicy, I started to develop my own food interests” (Rainbow Plant Life). Nisha taught herself how to cook at the age of 14, but never thought of cooking as a career path. Nisha graduated from Berkeley with a degree in Political Science in 2009 and from Harvard Law School with a J.D. in 2012.

Nisha described working in corporate law as “soul-crushing” (Today). Nisha switched to nonprofit law, but still was unhappy practicing law. Fortunately, Nisha had started to re-discover her true passion: cooking. She started a food blog (https://rainbowplantlife.com/), a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@RainbowPlantLife) and posted her cooking on Instagram (@rainbowplantlife). In 2018, Nisha was approached by Penguin Random House to write a cookbook. In June of 2019, her cookbook (The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook:  Wholesome, Indulgent Plant-Based Recipes) was published. As of December 2023, Nisha's YouTube channel had 1.15 million subscribers, and she had 781,000 followers on Instagram.

Although cookbooks are works of literature, the recipes in cookbooks are not copyrightable.  “A recipe is a statement of the ingredients and procedure required for making a dish of food. A mere listing of ingredients or contents, or a simple set of directions, is uncopyrightable. As a result, the copyright office cannot register recipes consisting of a set of ingredients and a process for preparing a dish” (Circular 33).  However, cookbooks still have parts written by the author of the cookbook, like a Forward and non-recipe content, that along with any pictures in the cookbook, are copyrightable.  Nisha shared with us her opinion on this aspect of copyright law, and how it impacts her work:

You can find Nisha’s Vegan Brownie Recipe here: https://rainbowplantlife.com/the-absolute-best-vegan-brownies/.

Legal Issues that Arise in Nisha’s Work

If a social media influencer like Nisha is endorsing a product, the influencer’s, “endorsement message should make it obvious when you have a relationship (‘material connection’) with the brand” or are being paid for the promotion (FTC Guidance for Influencers). Nisha explained these disclosure requirements to us:

Nisha gave us a great explanation of how influencer brand deals work:

Finally, when making YouTube videos, Nisha must be careful to not infringe the copyrights of others, particularly when including music in her videos:

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