If perchance, a hypothetical lacer made a copy of Miss Channer's Mat and "gave" it to a friend, and if Ruth Bean had someway of knowing about such a private transaction, and if she could find a lawyer to take the case; she would be entitled to the "profit" she would have made had she sold the recipient lacer the pricking. Hardly worth going after, is it?
Now, maybe some of our British friends could enlighten me on British copyright law, but in the States a copyright is only good for fifty years after the death of person who copyrighted it. Now as memory serves me, copyrights were recently brought up in Congress and extended in order to put money in the coffers of Walt Disney, Inc. whose copyrights on his troop of characters were about to expire. I wonder if under British copyright law the copyright on a hundred plus year old mat has not expired. Besides, I wouldn't want one. I would need at least eight for a complete place setting. Anyone game? Tom Andrews ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 3:34 PM Subject: Re: [lace] Miss Channer/enforcement issues So, Tom, if someone were, hypothetically speaking, not that I am advocating it, to very quietly and in a non-public place, photocopy the pattern and give it to her friend, how would the damages be reckoned? Ruth Bean repeatedly goes on record as saying that it is not worth reprinting. However, they did respond with a reminder that they own the copyright at one point when someone offered on-line to photocopy it for another person. I don't think anyone is actually proposing to run off as many as a hundred copies, and if they did, they would lose their shirts on the enterprise, much as Ruth Bean, apparently would if they did it. It is the person who reproduces the pattern that suffers economic loss in this scenario, so how do you calculate damages? It would be an interesting question for a law school exam. It seems to me that every year Ruth Bean is deluged with e-mails from people pleading to have them reprint this pattern. This kind of annoyance is probably unknown for "The Idiot's Guide to Safe Cracking", for instance, but the lacemakers are a fanatically law abiding group. Devon who never advocates law-breaking. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
