Beware of Australian designs. Copyright laws in Australia are different to those in other countries. Due to treaties with most international countries our copyright laws cover our designers internationally so beware of selling a fo from an Aussie desingners pattern, seek their permission first, or use your common sense and take the advice of previous posts in this thread by Artlady.
The design side of the law can get a little messy but knitted work is generally not seen as ‘functional’ under the Australian copyright laws and therefor if you reproduce an Australian pattern to sell commercially you need the express permission of the designer. If a designer has published their pattern on a website, magazine or other publication and does not clearly state you cannot reproduce their item for personal use you have the implied permission to go ahead and make the item. If you wish to lend that pattern to a friend to use you are also covered, sharing a purchased pattern, (not photocopied) is fine and not an infringment of copyright law. A designers copyright is in place upto 70 years after they have died.
Now heres the fun bit, I got all of this info from the linked website at the bottom of this post.
Using ideas, information, techniques and methods:
Copyright does not protect ideas or information. Nor does it protect styles or techniques or methods. Copyright protects the way in which an idea or concept is expressed – for example, as a
drawing, or a piece of writing. Therefore, if you are simply using someone elseʼs idea, information, technique or method to create a garment, you will not be infringing copyright. For example, the original idea of making a swimming costume in two pieces was not protected, but it is likely that the first bikini and the pattern for that bikini were protected as artistic works. Also, while a particular pattern for flared pants may be protected, the general idea of pants being flared is not.
If you were however to change a pattern by someone and try to resell it as your own creation and you lay your FO next to the FO of the designer and you had difficulty finding a diffence in design you would be infringing their copyright.
I have noticed there are a few articles on the net saying its fine to sell a reproduction as long as you mention the designers name but that goes against everything I have learned so far. I will be looking deeper in the the ‘design’ side of it, some items are considered artistic even though they are functional and this is where it can get very confusing.
http://www.copyright.org.au/find-an-answer/browse-by-what-you-do/craftworkers/
