Intellectual Property Law

Craft and Copyright

By Wendy Seltzer

I just got the latest issue of Craft Magazine, which, along with fun projects like “Hand-Sewn Free-Range Monsters,” contains my column on Craft and Copyright. I make the case that crafters should seek balanced copyright, since they find themselves on both sides of the aisle:

Your artistic works are copyrighted upon creation, as soon as they’re “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” If you do nothing further, the law forbids others from copying that goes beyond fair use. Readers can’t take the patten and detailed descriptions you’ve posted and copy them verbatim, but can they make and sell the craft described? That depends on the copyright in the crafted object: a richly patterned sweater’s surface design could be copyright-protected, but its shape would not. Further, if you’ve published a pattern, readers probably get an implied license at least to make the craft from it. That means too, that when you’re on the other side, using someone else’s patterns, you’re free to take uncopyrightable methods and “useful articles,” but limited in taking full-blown expression.

Part two of “Crafting Laws” will follow in the next issue.

Full post as published by Legal Tags on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).