On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 08:29:12PM -0700, Adele Shaak wrote:
> Your bookmark sounds like an adaptation to me.
Which means: I can put a picture on my website, but not the pricking, and I
should name the source - correct?
> If you had looked at a photo of a finished piece and said to yourself
> "gosh, I bet I could draw a pattern like that" and then did, without
> using any published pattern as a guide, then that is your creation and
> the copyright is yours. But, you used the published pattern to help you
> create your own pricking and so you are adapting the published pattern
> and you may only use that for yourself.
Ah.
If I do own the pattern and have looked at it (without purposefully memorizing
it), and then closed the book and drew my own, is that "using the pattern as a
guide" or not? I'm talking about *very* simple lace pieces for which it's very
easy to draw the pattern by just looking at the lace, or even without that.
By the way, I'm getting into those details just to understand things better -
I'm not trying to insist that it's OK for me to do the things I'm writing about.
> It doesn't matter whether you
> used the pattern by scanning it or by copying the dots by hand - it's
> still somebody else's pattern. Putting that pricking onto your website
> is a violation of copyright because you are basically republishing
> somebody else's pattern. But, you could put photos of your finished
> lace onto your website, with a credit to the book.
Yep. That seems right.
> >Also, are all designs in books automatically copyright?
>
> If the design was done for the book, the designer (might be the author,
> might be somebody else) holds the copyright. But, if a book shows, for
> example, historical pieces of lace, nobody gets copyright on that
> design just because they put it in a book, but there is still a
> copyright on the *presentation* of that design - the photograph or
> drawing that appears in the book. So, you couldn't just scan the photo
> straight out of the book and put it up on your website, for example,
> but you could take a look at the photo and use the old lace as
> inspiration for a new pattern you drew yourself, and you would have the
> copyright on that.
Ah. That seems reasonable. Does it work even if my "new pattern" lace piece
ends up very similar to the old one?
> The difference is between illustrating a simple technique and a design.
> For example, if you learn from the book how to do the meandering braid,
> then you are welcome to use the meander design in your own patterns,
> just as you would be if you learned, say, cloth stitch or half stitch
> from the book.
That's what I thought.
> But, you have to draw your own pattern, even if it is
> just a straight strip with the meander technique in it. You can't just
> copy (hand or scanning) the ones from the book.
Right.
Just to get into details, what's the difference between hand copying and drawing
my own? If I'm not looking at the original while doing it, does it count as my
own, even though I'm using the same style of diagram? It just happens to be my
favourite diagram style (at least for some things), and there aren't many of them...
> Designs are more
> complex and may include many techniques - the actual designs, like "Tie
> Ends" or the "Braid Sampler" are of course copyright.
Yep.
> These are just my opinions based on a fair amount of time spent reading
> up on copyright (and I have a friend who juggles copyright laws for a
> living). The reason lawyers make lots of money is that there are always
> fine shadings of meaning and grey areas that may be argued until the
> cows come home. And, as Stephanie has pointed out, the copyright laws
> differ depending on which country you're in.
I doubt we get many lawsuits on lace designs, so I was mostly wondering what
people in the lace community feel is and isn't OK.
> But anyway, I hope this helps.
Definitely. Thanks!
Weronika
--
Weronika Patena
Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA
http://vole.stanford.edu/weronika
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