COPYRIGHT question

[ArtLady1981]

Here's a copy/paste from an informative post in the "Copyright Matters" group over at Ravelry, in response to my post about the McCall's copyright issue:

"The McCalls of today is not the same company that published the knitting patterns of the 70’s. McCalls sewing sold their knitting magazine division to another company. I happen to know that company destroyed all the patterns they had in the archives and have no interest whatsoever in the copyrights to those patterns. So, no, McCalls isn’t going to come after anyone about that cuz they don’t own those copyrights any more. They are/were owned by a Japanese company. The same company that has given me permission to post pdf’s of those old patterns on the internet if I so desire.

So, No. McCalls isn’t coming after anyone for sharing a xeroxed copy of one of those old patterns."

[dudeKnit]

The book may be copyrighted but the patterns may not be.

Dealing with copyright I wouldn't base anything off of hearsay, I'd want something from McCall's legal dept in writing, CYA.

Possibly they gave you permission as they see this a bigger hassle to actually enforce since the spread of digital information is impossible to stop, some mega-corps are too thick headed to figure this out and insist on DRM that gets broken within days of release. Think Bluray.

[suzeeq]

If the book contains the pattern, they'd be copyrighted as being the book.

Stitch patterns are not copyrighted, but hthe manner in which they're presented can be.

[ArtLady1981]

.....Dealing with copyright I wouldn't base anything off of hearsay, I'd want something from McCall's legal dept in writing, CYA.

Exactly what I'm thinking.

But the post was very interesting. Had to share.

You know the old saying? "Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear."

That about covers hearsay...

[dudeKnit]

Very true.

I don't really understand why a company would try to copyright a pattern. I understand that they do so to protect them as was stated that they owned it at the time of printing, in that case I could see them wanting some type of protection from say someone copyrighting a work that they printed then trying to sue them or extort money due to them owning a copyright on them and not getting remuneration for it at time of printing.

Seems sad when talking about something that someone with skill could look at a garment and go home and almost exactly reproduce it without a pattern. I'm assuming the gurus here with the mystical stitch wizardry are capable of this, call it zen-knitting if you will.