There is a difference between something having copyright protection and actually being copyrighted. The former is automatic while the latter requires the pattern be registered with the US Copyright Office.
Quilts are legally considered useful articles and do not qualify for copyright registration. It is the design, not the quilt, that has the copyright protection.
The design, not the end product - the quilt, is the subject of the registered copyright. When someone sells a pattern that contains a copyrighted design, they are selling to the purchaser the right to make that article with the copyrighted design. The right of the copyright owner to control what is done with that copy (in this case the pattern) is lost once the pattern is sold or given away.
In Baker v Selden, 101 US 99 (1879), the Supreme Court specifically addressed the issue of whether or not something made from copyrighted information in a book was covered by the copyright on that book. The Court said, "The mere statement of the proposition is so evident, that it requires hardly any argument to support it." The Supreme Court felt the whole idea was so obvious that it took little explanation but it explained it anyway by stating:
A treatise on the composition and use of medicines, be they old or new; on the construction and use of ploughs, or watches, or churns; or on the mixture and application of colors for painting or dyeing; or on the mode of drawing lines to produce the effect of perspective, would be the subject of copyright; but no one would contend that the copyright of the treatise would give the exclusive right to the art or manufacture described therein.
No one can claim that the copyright on instructions on making and/or using an article gives the manufacturer the exclusive right to that article. The Supreme Court then went on to say that is if someone wanted to claim an exclusive right to a product, they needed to apply for a patent, not through printing and selling instructions on how to make the item.
A derivative, a work that has been transformed or recast, must be independently copyrightable. Weissmann v. Freeman, 868 F.2d 1313, 1320-21 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 883 (1989). The original copyrighted work must be changed into a new work in some manner. If there exists a registered copyright, that copyright would be on the design on the quilt. Therefore a derivative of the pattern would have to be a new version of the design. Someone using the pattern to make the actual design is not creating a derivative but rather an exact copy as intended by the pattern designer.
In lay terms, no, the holder of the copyright on the pattern cannot claim copyright to the quilt you made from their pattern. Anyone want to guess what one of my research papers in grad school was on?
Last edited by auntnana; 04-02-2015 at 05:48 AM.