Cakes, as edible art, can be an artistic medium for displaying an image or portraying a character.
Entertainment media organizations including Disney, Lucasfilm, and Sanrio have asserted that cakes should not portray their copyrighted fictional characters or their copyrighted images without licensing.
[5] In 2012, President Barack Obama of the United States had celebrity pastry chef Duff Goldman design a cake for a party celebrating his second inauguration.
[6][7] In 2017, President Donald Trump had a Washington, D.C. bakery[8] replicate Obama's cake made for his inauguration.
[6][7] The matter raised the profile of copyright questions about cakes.