I wrote this for B.... who has suggested that I should put it up as well - because she likes the way I have tried to explain "how it works". I don't know whether it does or not but here you are.
You want to build a house. You look at house plans. You find one you think you like and you buy the plan. Then you employ a builder to build it so you can live in the house. Two things are important here. First, employing the builder is fine. Building a house is a very complex task and you are paying someone to do something you cannot do yourself. Second, you intend to live in the house you are building.
When the house is built you throw a party. It's your "housewarming". A couple of your friends come along to the party and say they like the house so much they want to build the same house. They tell you there are a couple of things they think they would like to change but they ask you if they could have the plan. That is all they tell you. You give it to them and they build a house. In doing so they hinge all the doors on the other side, use different bricks from those in the plan and put more solar panels on the roof. Then they sell the house at a profit.
It all sounds pretty good doesn't it - but they have cheated you and, more importantly, they have cheated the architect who designed the house. They have cheated you because they have "borrowed" something out of which they intend to make a financial advantage - the plans. They have not told you this. That is bad enough but it is worse for the architect.
He or she has not been paid for the use of his plans. The plans actually belong to the architect. The plans do not belong to you. What you bought was the right to use those plans for your own personal use. Yes, you have a roll of architectural plans in your possession but you do not own the design. The architect owns the design. It is his or her work, not yours.
Your friends are even worse. It makes no difference that the doors are hinged on the other side, that the bricks are different, or that there are more solar panels on the roof. All these things make no difference because the basic structure of the house remains essentially the same. There is no feature which makes the house so unique they can claim it as their own design. They did not start from initial sketches. You bought a fully realised plan (even if the architect consulted you about it) and they borrowed it. They have stolen the plans from the architect and made a profit from his or her work. Yes, most people will still think of it as "borrowing" but it is actually theft and the law recognises it as such.
Now I will turn that into the pattern scenario and see if you can understand it. You "buy the pattern" and what you have bought is the right to make the pattern for yourself or to give to someone or to get someone to make for you.
When you have finished making the item you show it to your friends. They say they like it and want to make it so you let them "borrow" the pattern or show them where they can find it on the internet. It is labelled "copyright". The law applies unless the designer specifically states otherwise. One of your friends makes the garment. They decide to follow the pattern but make some changes. They don't like the rib (the "doors") so they change that. They use a different stitch pattern ( the different "bricks") and, because the buttons are smaller than the buttons the pattern suggests, they add more buttons (the "solar panels"). They then go ahead and sell the garment...and they have broken the law.
Why? Because they have followed the pattern which is the same idea as the architect's pattern. There is nothing in what they are doing which is sufficiently unique for them to be able to claim it is their own pattern. You have let them use the pattern for nothing. The designer who owns the pattern, and who has spent many hours working on it, gets nothing at all.
That is "theft" - "(1) A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. (2) A person who steals is guilty of theft; and "thief" shall be construed accordingly." That's the definition in the Crimes Act 1958, sec. 72.
It is theft because the person making the item has "dishonestly appropriated" a pattern belonging to someone else with the intention of permanently depriving them of the income they have the right to derive from it. If you have loaned them the pattern then you are complicit in their wrong doing. Don't do it.
Now there is at least one other issue I need to cover here and that is "stitch patterns". Knitters and crocheters will know what I mean. Many of us have books full of them, "dictionaries" and "compendiums" of them. They are there to be used to make items. That is their intention. They are not copyright as such - although the entire books are. I know. It's confusing. What it amounts to is this. You can use stitch patterns from these books. The patterns themselves are not copyright. They are intended to be used and this is often explicitly stated in the book. "Knit one, purl one" ribbing, "feather and fan", or "flag and bar" cannot be copyrighted but the instructions on how to do it can be. A designer can use the ideas just as you can use them to alter something to suit yourself. It is the instructions (including charts, pictures and photographs) which are subject to the laws of copyright.
I hope that makes it a bit clearer - or have I muddied the waters still further?
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5 comments:
Thanks for Copyright Law, Part 2. Even more clear.
However, it seems to me that much copyright theft must go on, on a daily basis, without anyone thinking of it.
For example, recipes. Surely the Country Women claim copyright on their recipes? Many people would use these recipes for cake stalls for other good causes (ie, not CWA/CWI). When I suggest or forward a recipe to a friend, who, like me, will use it for her own use, I believe that is allowable, as she may have found it by herself and will not be making money from it. Though we may then go and buy the recipe maker’s cookbook, which is probably why s/he has provided a recipe in a public place anyway. In real life, we do not, each one of us, design our own recipes for things, and we do, then, sometimes make them for money-making (often charitable) purposes.
So, using something for one’s personal use and not benefitting financially from it, is allowable.
Why did I not become a copyright lawyer? (Because I like a distress-free and stress-free life!). (And becoming a lawyer fifty years ago would have been very unlikely.)
LMcC
Recipes are considered to be just a list of ingredients and you cannot copyright those. That said there are often highly literary descriptions in recipe books of how someone has made something and they are covered by copyright. Knitting patterns are not considered to be just a list of ingredients but an integral part of the instructions which go with them.
No, you have filtered the water cat. I was wondering about recipes as well. Thanks. J
Do cookbook authors not copyright their recipes in books? One cookbook I checked has “All rights reserved...no part may be reproduced...without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders”. And “The moral tights of the author have been asserted.” That seems to be a warning about unauthorised copying and breaching copyright. (The other cookbook I checked did not have a similar warning.)
LMcC
They can copyright the instructions for making the dish and the other written content like an introduction and the descriptions and so on - but they can't copyright the list of ingredients. It means you can tell someone how much wool they might need to buy to make your cardigan design but you can't copyright that, only the actual instructions about how to make it. C (who works in A-Gs)
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