Lonestar, it sounds like the designer of the product you purchased was burned at some point! I know of one quilt designer who was burned; she designed a quilt, wrote a pattern, and released it for sale. A couple of years later, she discovered a quilt shop was photocoping her written pattern and teaching a class using this pattern. The pattern was a required purchase to take the class, but the pattern was out of print. Did the shop owner contact the designer for permission to photocopy it, or to ask if the designer could reprint it (which the designer would have been more than happy to do)? No. The shop owner photocopied the pattern, sold it, and even claimed it was HER design. I think we can all agree that this was wrong.
It seems to me one of the biggest problems with copyright and quilting is that the legal language the designers have to use to prevent such situations scares the crap out of the rest of us!