It's a copyright issue, from my understanding, you can not copyright the ingredient list of a recipe, however, you may copyright the description of the process of making the recipe.
There was a fairly big discussion of this recently on another forum involving drbbq's book, and this seemed to be the consensus of opinion.
Trademarks have to do with brand names or "nicknames" of products, i.e. Weedeater, Nike Swoosh design, etc.
1. Patent law - protects inventions that are novel, useful, and nonobvious by granting its owner the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the claimed invention.
2. Copyright law - protects authors of creative works such as books, movies, art from any unauthorized copying, reproduction or distribution of their work. Protects only the expression and not the idea of the work.
3. Trademark law - protects the name or mark associated with the product to which they are attached. A trademark is any word, name, symbol, color or sound that is adopted and used by a company to identify its goods and distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by others. Service mark is the same as a trademark but identifies a service and not a product.