Originally Posted by
feline fanatic
I wouldn't be overly concerned about it Woody. In most quilt shows they just want you to give credit if you used someone's pattern. There was a big bru-ha-ha about a year ago with McCalls quilt magazine publishing inaccurate info on copyright issues and entering quilt shows. It cause many shows to go into a tailspin demanding quilters who made a quilt from a pattern they did not design themselves get written permission from pattern designers that they could in fact enter the quilt in competition. In fact it caused untold amounts of grief for poor Bonnie Hunter, she was inundated with requests. She finally put something on her website that anyone is free to exhibit a quilt they made using her patterns and to please quit emailing her as it was completely overloading her in box.
It later came out that McCalls was dead wrong in their article but I don't think they ever printed a retraction. If you enter a show there with a pattern you drafted yourself but inspired from a picture on the net I think that is ample information to submit with your entry application and it is doubtful you have infringed on anyones copyright.
The following website debunks false information given out about copyright issues. It's called Tabberone's Hall of Shame, which spotlights companies who spread false copyright information.
http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/...aftSites.shtml As seen on this page, companies such as McCalls magazine, Etsy.com, Cricut, Provocraft (and many more) get it completely wrong.
You see, this is a hot button for people who earn a living in quilting. Conversations such as this hurt business. One person who hears gossip from so and so (in this case, the quilt show director who invented a ridiculous rule that has nothing to do with true copyright law). The rule requires innocent people to perform the equivalent of 'go jump in a lake' in order to submit a beautiful quilt that took hundreds of hours to make. Of course they're going to jump in the lake! And those who find jumping in the lake annoying, simply skip entering a show completely.
So where does this lead us? The owners of the lake get tired of telling people to quit jumping in the lake, so they put up fences (I.e.: ignore emails asking for permission to jump in the lake.) And if the innocent people go public, disheartened because they can't get permission to jump in the lake, it gives the owner a bad reputation, which is completely undeserved. People stop buying quilt patterns, the numbers of quilts entered in shows dwindles down to only women who are artistic enough to create their own patterns (I'm not one of them, by the way) and the industry suffers, especially the pattern designers who so graciously share their talent with the rest of us!
While your innocent question could have received a more thoughtful response from me (and I apologize for not trying harder) I hope you can see why questions about copyright issues are mind boggling even for the 'experts'.