The more I read, the more confused I get. You need a law degree. Since I don't show my quilts, and I don't sell them, I guess I am ok. I have designed several quilts . If I post any pictures, feel free to make one too. I just love to quilt. I hope I don't end up in jail.....they don't have the room for all my quilt stuff.

How is this odd? Used books and magazines are sold all the time...online, brick and mortar shops, garage sales, etc. The ebay seller is offering the actual pages, not copies of actual pages. I don't have the heart to cut pages from my magazines, but I certainly enjoy having the option of purchasing pages that have the only pattern I want...I don't have to store the whole magazine or pay the shipping for something I don't really want or need. If the magazine company sold it once, they're out of it....unless someone is making copies and even then I'd think it would be hard to include the company. Just wondering outloud on my keyboard...not challenging or debating or interpreting law.

The pages were COPIED and sold.

Does that mean, if one of you make a beautiful quilt and place a picture (close up) and I see it here on the board and I "copy" it by making a similar one with my own colors, I am doing wrong?

no

Boy, isn't it wonderful that so many have questions? It shows me that the individuals that reg. this board really want to do the right thing?

I guess the part that confuses me and I think others is the definitions: design/instruction vs. block/technique. I guess I intertwine them and I'm trying to get it. Please have patience!! :D

Say I take a 4P and create to my knowledge a unique block (hard these days). Now I think I understand that I own the design that I've created, but not the block. This is what is confusing me. Aren't they one in the same, if not, how do they differ?

The same with instructions/technique. I write the instructions and own them. But aren't my instructions the technique?

My brain hurts!!! :lol: :lol:

HELP!!!!

Every "Block" has been made at least one time. 50 years ago even 100 hundred years ago women were not worried about copyright laws. The directions are what are copyright protected correct. Most generally those directions are hard for newer generation sewers and quilters to understand. Even I who learned how to sew with women who were in there 80's and 90's when as knee high to a grasshopper made it seem hard.
Can you write the directions in a manner keeping with the tradition and still credit the original author as giving you the original inspiration. There are many designers and pattern makers doing that now. It is recycle reuse but I call it relearning what we already knew in different language. I was blessed to learn my skills from women who were experts and had very nimble fingers.

You MIGHT be doing something wrong. If the quilt is an original design then it is copyright protected, with or without and express statement of such. You ARE doing something wrong if you copy somebody else's original design without their permission.

that is illegal.

the fact that a person hasn't been caught, tried (or sued) and convicted does not make that person any less guilty.

OK. So how about this. What if you wanted to sell purses on a forum like etsy. If you were to add in the price of a pattern for each purse sold, and purchase such pattern for each item sold (I know, kind of far fetched), would that be legal? Is the copyright ensuring the person gets paid, and that's it? I've always been fascinated with the boutique sales and etsy shops, but haven't participated in any because I am very aware of infringement issues.