Christine-

That's right, Disney characters would be protected by a trademark. That's why there is a license attached to every Disney fabric or craft item we may choose to buy. (I'm sure there are copyrights as well, but for the sake of this arguement I'll leave that alone...LOL)

An acquaintance of mine has a brother who is an attorney for Disney. She said he has a chuckle when the hot n' heavy debates start up mentioning gossip about the little old lady who was sued by Disney for selling baby clothes she made using Disney fabric. He says "big bad Disney is at it again". In other words, it's a hoax.

And I agree that copyright debates simply spoil all the fun of buying patterns. Most designers understand this and avoid the debates. They are true business people, who understand the truth about copyright issues, and more importantly, they understand it's not wise to bite the hand that feeds them by adding silly restrictions they don't have the right to add in the first place. They understand it is harrassment of the consumer and it needs to stop.

Do you remember back in the 70s & 80s when knitting was all the rage? There were cheap plastic machines you could buy and all types of yarn, it was a huge business back then. But in the early 80s the pattern designers began public debates about all the copyright issues. There was heated debate in stores, during classes, knitting magazines published 'rules' continuously which led to discussion among knitting groups, clubs and guilds. Some of the debate was fair, since some of the women made copies of patterns to share with all their friends. But most of the debate was heated, with angry words. Slowly, through the early 80s all the fighting caused women to withdraw and pursue other hobbies and the knitting industry died out. The knitting pattern designers shot themselves in the foot with all the fighting.

In the 90s the same thing happened with the machine embroidery designs industry among the designers. In fact, look at the stats for any machine embroidery chat list on yahoogroups and look at the number of messages sent month to month each year. In EVERY chat list you see the messages with high numbers in the early years and then the messages slowly died out about 5 or 6 years ago. All because of the fighting! The designers lost business, put their designs 'on sale' to try and drum up business and then one by one they went out of business. After a certain 'copyright cop' filed a lawsuit in federal court, the judges declared the copyright cops were wrong (to put it in simpler terms) and that was that. But by then the buying public was fed up with all the fighting, they had disappeared. Fed up with the designers, they went elsewhere.

It could possibly happen to the quilt pattern businesses as well... except that the sane pattern designers are telling those with overactive egos where they are wrong.... and slowly the sane designers are helping squash all the false information flying around out there. Conversations like those on quilting board ARE helping! So if you can stand it a little longer, perhaps over the course of the next 3-5 years slowly they'll get the word out and the fighting will die down.

I hope this helps!!!