If you mean to say "I can't understand/see why a person can't" it's because that is considered "Commercial Use." Most patterns prohibit that. Why can't you do that? Because you would be making money off of someone else's intellectual property. Doesn't that sound a little like stealing?

I recently needed to have reverse copies of quilt pattern applique blocks made from a pattern I had purchased. Most copyrighted patterns state on the pattern that copies can be made for personal use. This one did not. The block patterns were too large for my copy machine. The commercial copy business will not copy without granted permission to do so. I emailed the owner of the copyright and she responded with permission. Commercial copy businesses know the copyright laws and reputable ones abide by the law.

Libraries typically buy special copies of book with a "School & Library" license. It is different from the standard license and affords them additional rights that we usually wouldn't pay for when we buy a book at the bookstore/online. In addition, they can lend books under the First Sale law. While you have borrowed the book, you are allowed to make copies for Personal Use. If it weren't from a library/school, typically the law asks that all personal copies are either transferred or destroyed at the time of sale/gifting. Being from a library's collection, different laws might apply. I'm not sure. You could always ask your local librarian. They are required to study copyright law as part of the library science curriculum.

Of course the nice thing about libraries is that you usually can just check the book out again & then there definitely would be no issue with using the pattern. I'm not sure about the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law would support you making a copy, keeping it in a file with the name of the book/author & then when you want to use it again, just check the book out. One other thing, the instructions themselves may be copyrighted, but if it's a traditional pattern, the pattern pieces very likely cannot be copyrighted.

No, it doesn't sound like stealing to me. That person made the choice to sell that intellectual property in order to profit from it. Her intellectual property -- the written pattern -- which she chose to sell for profit, is a pattern with which to make useful articles. The useful articles made from her intellectual property, are not her intellectual property! You are not stealing from her if you put 100 hours into making the useful article, and then sell it to recoup the value of your time. She has already made her due profit from your purchase of her pattern. What you do with the pattern represents your work, not hers. If you bought one copy of her pattern and copied it 100 times and sold them for your own profit -- that would be stealing.

Edit to add, I'm speaking of someone making a few items from a pattern; I'm not talking about someone renting factory space, hiring workers and mass-producing a million articles using the pattern. I believe that would truly be 'commercial use', and an arrangement would have to be made with the pattern designer.

thank you for that good explanation.

So stealing a little is OK, but stealing a lot isn't? Unfortunately, "commercial" has already been defined as selling for profit; we don't get to modify that definition to suit ourselves. How much time (or money) a person has spent making copies of someone else's design is immaterial and certainly doesn't justify its theft.

No, I don't believe stealing a little is okay. But I don't believe selling a quilt you've made from a purchased pattern is stealing. My understanding is that US law states that the useful article made from a pattern, is not considered a copy of the pattern. The pattern refers to the written directions for making the quilt, not to the useful article that results from following the copyrighted directions. So, making a copy of the pattern would mean making a copy of the written directions, not making a quilt using the directions.

As far as 'commercial', I'm not sure of the definition, but if it does mean selling for profit, most people selling a quilt they've made from a purchased pattern are unlikely to break even when factoring in the time spent at skilled-laborer wage. Profit would only start to come into it if someone set up a business to mass-produce the item at low cost, and in that case, I agree that an arrangement would have to be made with the pattern designer.

What about this: A woman buys a pattern for a dress, takes that pattern and fabric which she has purchased, to a dressmaker, who makes the dress, using the purchased pattern. The dressmaker then charges the woman $$ to make the dress from the pattern the woman bought. Do you consider that stealing from whoever designed the pattern? Because money was made, using the pattern....money that was not paid to the designer of the pattern.

Seems to me that making items from a purchased pattern and profiting from the making of those items, is the same thing. It's not stealing to sell items one makes from a pattern one has bought and paid for. The pattern designer cannot reasonably expect to either control or profit from all the items that will be made from the pattern he/she designed.

When you purchase a pattern, you are purchasing just the written instructions to make a quilt. The person who wrote the pattern and copyrighted same pattern CANNOT dictate what you do with that pattern. All he/she can do is lawfully expect that you make no copies of same pattern to sell or give away. You can sell that pattern. You can make as many copies as needed for your own use. You can use that pattern to make as many quilts as desired. You can sell those quilts. If you have ever made your own clothes, you most likely purchased a pattern such as Simplicity or McCalls. Those patterns are the same thing. You don't have to call and get permission if you make a pair of pants for someone else using the pattern you purchased. You don't have to label those pants with the pattern makers name. You don't have to ask permission if you want to use that pattern to make three more pair because they fit nicely. That pattern maker can print whatever they want on the pattern, but that doesn't make it true.

Good point.

Have you had a problem doing this? Or heard of someone who has?

Actually, US law says that designs for articles of clothing do not get to be copyrighted. Quilt designs, under US law, have been shown -- at least in most cases -- to be separate from the utilitarian function of 3 layers held together by thread.

We're really dealing with 3 different issues, here, though.
1) The written pattern/instructions: Those cannot be copied except for Personal Use. Plain & Simple. There is plenty of legal precedent on that issue. Don't make copies & distribute to other people, regardless of whether you charge any money, unless you have the permission of the copyright holder.

2) What can be copyrighted: in quilts there are certain things that can be copyrighted & others that cannot. 3 layers held together by stitching cannot be copyrighted. Neither can a quilt based primarily on traditional blocks since they are held in Public Domain. In addition, now certain designs based on copyleft materials also cannot be copyrighted. Any other design can usually be copyrighted as long as it isn't substantially similar to another copyrighted work. The designer has the right to reproduce the quilt, produce other commercial items based on the quilt (similar quilts, workshops, patterns, photos), sell/lease/lend out the quilt & publicly display the quilt.

3) Untested legal opinions: Most of the time if a copyright holder (the original designer or whoever she sold her copyright/patent to: usually a pattern maker or quilting magazine) will send a notice of copyright infringement & possibly a Cease and Desist order to the offending party. The quilter receives the letter, stops making the quilts & that's the end of it. There have literally been maybe a handful or so cases related to quilting IP that reached a judgement. Lawyers are therefore left to look to other cases they think might be similar when forming their legal opinions about hypothetical trials.

There are 2 camps: the first believes that selling quilts based on someone else's copyrighted design is like the Napster music sharing cases back in the late 90's. Hundreds of college kids were heavily fined. They had spent lots of money buying CD's, buying a CD burner, buying writable CD-ROM's & paying the monthly membership fee to Napster to download strangers' music, but the court still found them guilty of copyright infringement. Napster faced even heavier fines & filed for bankruptcy. This camp believes that quilters technically only buy the right to the pattern itself & that any additional rights must be directly granted (either by notice on the package or in writing) whenever such activities impact the potential market or value of the quilt design and/or pattern.

The other camp doesn't stand on as much legal precedent, but believes they have a very clear, simple argument. They believe that the clear purpose of a pattern is to make something substantially similar to the item depicted. They feel that by translating a design into a pattern, the designer is implicitly giving up most, if not all, of the rights to her copyrighted/patented design. Such lawyers argue that so long as a person legally purchases one copy of instructions/pattern, that person has the right to make &/or sell unlimited quilts based on the pattern as long as they don't sell copies of the written pattern/instructions It's a tougher argument to make, but stranger cases have been won.

Personally, I think it would be a great loss for the arts & quilting communities if designs cannot be protected. Who would bother to spend 3 months of their life coming up with a beautiful new quilt design for $2,000 if they could use that same amount of time to replicate others' work and make $12,000?

I agree. Thanks for posting this - saves me from doing the same.

After reading all the back and forth, I think all of you should quit quilting, sewing, knitting, embroidering, painting, etching or whatever else you do because someone, somewhere, past or present has already done it, made a pattern and written instructions. Obviously, you shouldn't copy Jane Doe's instructions for making a four patch and sell them as your own, but copyrighting a four patch pattern is absurd to start with. froggyintexas

I am not sure of your meaning with this last paragraph. Who is able to make $12,000 from making quilts from a pattern? Do not the designers make a profit from the sale of the pattern? Must we forever after genuflect and speak in hush whispers "this is from so - and - so's pattern"?

I believe in crediting the pattern designer, definitely but IMHO demanding reverence for someone who wrote a pattern, does not help the arts and quilting community.

If you don't want an item made, sold, or given from your pattern then don't write patterns. Don't teach classes either because wouldn't that be the same?

No. But it seems parallel to me of the case in which a person buys a pattern, makes objects using that pattern, and then sells those objects. I'm with those who say that intellectual property or copyright does not extend to items made from the pattern but simply to the pattern itself. That the pattern (not items made from it) cannot be duplicated and sold, nor can anyone who purchased that pattern pass it off as her/his own. That's where I think copyright applies.

I think there is some confusing of issues here, when equating copyright/patent, and pattern/design. In the many discussions we've had on copyright, I seem to recall someone pointing out that it isn't the design that is copyrighted, it's the pattern -- the printed instructions on how to make the quilt. If I recall correctly, they said it is much harder to get a copyright on a design, and that's a different proposition altogether.



I can suggest a first step in protecting designs -- don't write up how-to instructions and sell them to thousands of other people.

I tested a pattern for someone once - an interesting experience. It is difficult to write fool-proof instructions.

Exactly. There is a big long post somewhere on the first or second page that describes the copyright law very well and talks about the false claims that pattern companies make. It's simple. You cannot make copies of a pattern and give them away or sell them. You can give away or sell an ORIGINAL pattern. Only the original once you pay for it. It is OK to sell your original patterns at garage sales.

You can sell what you make from it. Pattern companies sometimes want you to think you can't, but if you buy a copyrighted product the only thing you cannot do is make copies of it. Copyright means literally the right to COPY and that is owned by someone else.

You can take that pattern and make as many of those items as you want from one pattern and sell them, give them away, burn them, whatever. Even if the pattern company says you can't, the law says you can. they do not have control over what you make with it and what you do with what you make. Those are false claims.

Another example, books are copyrighted. You can lend sell or give a book away that you buy. You cannot go to your printer and copy all six hundred pages and sell or give that away. You can also buy several hundred books and make some weird modern art sculpture with them even if the author of the book has printed on the inside of the book jacket that you cannot do so. You can as long as you buy all 100 copies and don't print them off yourself.

Does that help?

IF the pattern is registered.

Sandy