Originally Posted by
dunster
If the design is original, it is copyright protected and you should not copy it. However, most quilt designs are not original. In most cases (but not all) the copyright applies to the pattern instructions and illustrations, not to the quilt design itself. If the quilt is made up of blocks in the public domain (and most blocks are), you can copy the quilt without any problem. An applique design is more likely to be original and protected by copyright. Patents don't apply to quilt patterns.
Cashs mom - the copyright police may not have shown up - yet - but Disney is very serious about prosecuting people who copy their images. That is their intellectual property, and they make serious money from it, so they protect it.
Whether you change something a little, or whether you sell it, or whether you show it, has no bearing on whether you're copying someone else's work without permission. You will probably never be caught, but you will still be cheating. Even if you purchase a pattern, you still technically need the copyright holder's permission to show a quilt made from that pattern in a show. (Permission is almost always given.)
I'm curious why it is "cheating". Most things out there aren't even very original, with the exception of someone like Judy Niemeyer and quilters who do applique where actual drawing ability is involved.
But cheating?
And as to why you have to have permission to show a quilt in a show--that's one I simply don't understand. If someone doesn't want you to make their quilt pattern and "show it off", whether informally or formally, I simply don't understand why they make a pattern. And I don't understand why the copyright extends to the quilt in that case and doesn't stop with the pattern ("first sale" doctrine). I guess the industry is being 'hypervigilant"
I know that some say that the quilt IS the pattern--but unless it is unique--...........truly unique--so probably nothing made up of triangles and squares and rectangles...they've been around a long, long time. Applique, yes...
As to the OP's question...is the quilt truly unique? IOW, is it really the designer's "original" work?
I've seen stuff attributed to a person nowadays and then looked at older magazines (90's) and seen the same pattern in it--and no attribution by the person that it isn't really original.