Originally Posted by tabberone
I do a lot of research into court cases. If you consider the large number of patterns produced by McCalls, Butterick, Vogue and Simplicity, just the large companies, there is not one federal lawsuit that has gone to trial that involves the use of their patterns that I can locate. One reason is the lack of registered copyrights by them.
Clothing designs and patterns are not subject to copyright. They are specificly not covered though that exception is often challenged.