BellaBoo

I get mad when I buy all the supplies and special tools and book for a class and then have a class member ask if she can borrow them during the class or worse pick them up when I'm not using them. I don't mind someone asking to borrow my tools to take to a class, but not during. One time I had to go search for my book after asking everyone if they had seen it, good thing I had the author sign it for me or I would not have known who had it. I was very angry and the whole class knew it.

willferg

Yup - it's legal. Below from Wikipedia:

"The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (see Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 109. The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell, lend or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy ends once ownership of that copy has passed to someone else, as long as the copy itself is not an infringing copy. This doctrine is also referred to as the "right of first sale," "first sale rule," or "exhaustion rule."

It sounds, according to this, that one is perfectly in one's rights to give away a pattern after purchasing it. If the original poster chooses not to do so in an effort to generate more sales for the designer as a show of support, that is certainly her choice, but it doesn't sound like she is legally obligated to do so...

rb.

I don't get what the difference is between my quilt guild's lending library, and sharing a pattern with a friend.

BellaBoo

Once you buy or receive a legal pattern, it's yours to give away or sell. You can not make a copy to give away or sell.

b.zang

Why does she need the pattern at the same time as you?
Can't she wait until you're finished with it?

DogHouseMom

Exactly. EVEN if you sell it for a profit.

Consider at the Audibon book that sold for $11 million. If the copyright laws extended to every resale of the book the original publisher would still hold the rights to all subsequent sales of the book. Wouldn't that be nice?

belmer

Ditto.... I agree with this all the way.

MTS

Double exactly!
You aren't putting another "copy" of the item in question out into circulation. It's still the one copy of the pattern, the book, whatever.

So, yes, you can lend, sell, donate the pattern - even with a monetary gain for yourself, but it is still the SAME unit, not a duplicate.

And I know that all sounds so nit-picky today, but really, think about it, would you have ever though you'd have a printer or a scanner so easily available in your home or office, or even a kinko's 20 years ago?

cabbagepatchkid

Me too. When I was doing counted cross stitch a friend and I used to share patterns and magazines. It all evened out in the end.

Mattee

The copyright rules for cross stitch can be a bit different, since the item made is actually a representation of another person's artwork or drawing. They're more strict than they may be for some forms of quilting. Some cross stitch designers really enforce their rights.