Originally Posted by alica1367
The officers of our quilt club including myself spent over an hr. at a lawyers office Fri. to start the ball rolling for us to become a guild. When ins. was discussed I posed the ? about copyrights. I mentioned this article to her. Her answer was "a copyright only pertains to the copying or passing around a pattern or book for others to use. We can't photo copy instructions from a book and sell them or give them to others even for free. We can make & sell anything we have made from our own purchased books. Borrowing books from others and making things to sell then giving the book back is a no no. Anything off the internet can be made and sold. If something is on the internet and we make it, we can sell the finished product. If we want to share the info to others we should direct them to the web site. The only time we can't make a product from something and sell it is if it has a patent on it. The patent# must be on the book or pattern." Where publishers & Authors are losing out is in the sales of their patterns & books. I hope I've explained this easy enough for understanding.
Thank you, alica1367. Perhaps YOU should be writing the follow-up article in McCall's. You have my vote!
It seems like the 'hard feelings' come in to play because articles like that in McCall's makes it SEEM that designers want it both ways. They design beautiful quilts and want to show those quilts. Great! But if they don't want anyone else to make their quilt and actually take it out in public, then don't send the pattern to a magazine, don't sell the pattern, and don't post the pattern on the internet. Post the picture, but not the directions.