one should never decide whether or not to do a thing based on whether or not they are likely to get caught.
wrong is wrong. period.
if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear the crash, whatever gets in the way will still be just as squashed.
if you are the only person using the pattern, then re-writing the instructions
for your exclusive use should fall within the parameters of fair use.
from that point forward things get increasingly fuzzy and complicated.
how original is the pattern design itself?
are we talking about blocks already in the public domain?
are the blocks/sections truly unique?
do you paraphrase the published instructions?
will you toss them completely and write everything from scratch without consulting the commercial pattern at all?
the ethical thing to do for a group situation would be to require each person to buy their own legal copy of the commercial pattern. that satisfies copyright law.
if you wish to supplement those instructions with something you wrote yourself, my definitely-not-a-lawyer feeling is that you'd not be violating copyright law if you shared copies of those with the group.
never provide copies of those instructions to anybody who cannot prove to you that they have already purchased a legal copy of the pattern. that covers your patooty.
whether or not you charge for the "home made" instructions has nothing to do with it.
doing it the wrong way, but doing it for free, just leaves you with no money to hire that lawyer you might need.
