View Single Post
Old 12-31-2015, 10:06 AM
  #14  
auntnana
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 91
Default

Making a quilt from a pattern and selling the quilt is 100% NOT copyright infringement. Duplicating/Selling the pattern as your own is copyright infringement. There is absolutely nothing in copyright law that grants this authority to the copyright owner to limit what can be done with the end product made from a copyrighted pattern. Or so says the Supreme Court.
The whole point of the first sale doctrine is that once the copyright owner places a copyrighted item in the stream of commerce by selling it, he has exhausted his exclusive statutory right to control its distribution.
Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. Lanza Research Int, 523 U.S. 135 (1998).

And as someone else pointed out a copyright and a patent are 2 different things. There is also difference between something having copyright protection and actually being copyrighted. The copyright protection is automatic while copyrighted requires the pattern be registered with the US Copyright Office.

If you design, copyright, and sell a quilt pattern you have every legal right to prevent someone from duplicating and selling the pattern as their own. You have zero legal recourse if someone makes 1,000 quilts from your pattern and sells the quilts. Even if the pattern itself says you cannot do such, it is not enforceable by law.
auntnana is offline