This is something that I have been pondering for a while now 
. In looking on the internet at patterns (free and otherwise) I have noticed that a lot of the ānon-freeā patterns are very similar to free patterns or patterns that I see in books. At what point can someone claim a pattern as their own :?? ? How many changes must they make? I am not asking for any devious reason. I just want to know.
Thanks
I suppose the key to your question is that the patterns are similar. When a designer creates a pattern and publishes it, she /he puts a copyright notice on it and registers it with the United States Copyright Office. If you own the copyright, you have the right to sell or give away the pattern at your discretion but if someone else is selling it without sharing the profits or paying a royalty or passing it off as their own, the copyright holder could sue for copyright infringement. If a pattern is copyrighted, but you think it is really something you designed and it was stolen you again could sue for design theft, but you would have to have some documented history with the pattern. If a design is a flagrant rip-off, someone might be looking for a lengthy court matter.
You hear about this kind of thing going on in the music and film industry all the time. Think Napster.
I worked as a secretary for Intellectual Property attorneys for many years. But if you have an item you think you want to protect, you should talk to an IP attorney. In this area, anyway, many attorneys will give you a half hour free consultation time to look at what you have and decide whether your matter is worth pursuing.
Obviously, if you create something, such as a piece of music, a book, a knitting pattern, it is in your own best interest to put a copyright notice on it and follow through with registering it with the Feds. Someone could still steal your idea, but you would have legal recourse to prevent them from making money off of something you created.
This is an excerpt from an excellent Knitty article on copyright issues:
- Iām designing a knitting pattern. Can I use a stitch pattern Iāve seen somewhere before?
The building blocks of stitch patterns ā knit, purl, cable, twist, increase, decrease, yarn over, and so forth-- are not protected by copyright. Theyāre techniques. However, their combinations might be protected.If the stitch pattern is in the public domain, then the answer is yes, you can use it. However, it is not so easy to determine whether a stitch pattern truly is in the public domain. āPublic domainā does not mean that the stitch pattern or other work has been published and is freely available. āPublic domainā means that any copyright in the work has since expired.
Where have you seen the stitch pattern? Is it a traditional stitch handed down from the knitting dawn of time [which suggests it is traditional], or is it someoneās original creation? Is it in every stitch dictionary youāve ever consulted, or have you only seen it in one place? The more common the stitch pattern is, the more likely it would be considered to be in the public domain.
This does not mean, by the way, that you can just slap your stitch dictionary on the scanner and publish a copy of the chart or photograph. Do your own work.
Even if youāve determined that the stitch patterns you want to use are traditional, there might be more to consider. An arrangement of selected traditional stitches may also be protected by copyright, if the arrangement itself is original.
- While I was window shopping, I spotted a nifty number in a store window. Can I publish my own pattern that looks just like it?
To put the question another way, is there copyright in the store sweater? The answer is a resounding maybe.Weāve already discussed the notion of a sweater as a copyrightable work of artistic craftsmanship. If we accept that this store sweater is such a thing, then yes, itās protected by copyright. And yes, publishing instructions telling other people how to replicate it may be a form of authorizing or counselling infringement.
By the way, copyright aside, there are other ways to protect a sweater design. It could be the subject of an industrial design, also known as a registered design or a design patent. Such registered designs can offer more definite protection than copyright, and thereās no fair dealing or fair use defence. However, registered designs are more expensive to obtain than copyright, and of shorter duration. A sweater design could also be protected through unregistered design or trademark rights if the designer could prove she was known for or associated with a certain style of design.
Both of these alternative forms of protection are less common, but you should be aware that they exist and that they are being used to protect clothing designs. So, even if you donāt think the sweater is protected by copyright ā well, you never know what other rights the designer may be able to assert.
But why are you following other peopleās trends, anyway? Shouldnāt you be busy setting them yourself?
- Iām a fledgling designer. Can I take an existing pattern I like and rework it somehow?
It depends.Occasionally you hear [or read] people quote a āten percent ruleā or something similar ā for example, if you change 10% of the garment, or if you change five, seven, or ten things about the garment, youāve done enough to make the design your own. Those rules are not reliable. What sort of āthingsā can you change? Colour? Yarn choice? Gauge? Do those changes necessitate any input on your part, besides some number crunching? Sometimes, you canāt even find five things to change. Consider the sock or the tube top. Yet those patterns may be just as deserving of copyright protection as an Alice Starmore design.
An assessment of copyright infringement is not merely a question of quantity; itās a qualitative matter as well. There is no set definition of āreworking;ā there is no magic formula to calculate infringement. Itās a subjective question: for you, for the potentially offended designer, for your lawyer, for a judge or a jury. In the end, the question of whether or not youāve infringed someone elseās rights in a pattern or garment can only be answered by setting out the patterns and the finished garments side by side and deciding whether or not, overall, your version is substantially similar to the original, and whether the elements you did take were protected by copyright according to the law in the relevant jurisdiction.
Perhaps an easier way out would be if you were to work from a pattern that you know is in the public domain. See the next question.
Donāt want to sound too ignorant but there are only so many ways you can knit something isnāt there? Itās like writing a song. Sooner or later there are going to be repeats.
There is a very comprehensive article in the new Vogue Knitting magazine about copyrights that seems to cover most of the most common questions.