Hi:
With some laces, particularly simple designs where you are on a grid
system, it is quite possible for several people to independently design
the same thing. That is nothing more than coincidence and it is not
breaking the law. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to
know what all the other designs look like and you don't have to be the
judge of whether yours is too similar to another, since your designed
your own.
Let's say someone does sue you over the similarity between your design
and hers. You still don't need to worry. If you have independently
designed it you have your working diagrams and your test pieces and
you've been talking about it with your friends and they'll probably see
or hear about your test pieces and your problems and triumphs - there
is, in other words, a trail of evidence that will protect you.
Some people are deluded by the power of copyright: Many years ago a
lacemaker I knew made a tape lace design in a simple trefoil pattern -
the one that has three loops, one after the other, forming a leaf-like
design. She wrote her name and the copyright symbol on it and proudly
informed everyone that they were no longer permitted to make any lace
using any form of any trefoil pattern, because she had copyrighted it.
She honestly believed she had the power to take over a form of pattern
that has been with us for thousands of years, and because she was a
rather pugnacious woman nobody tried to talk her out of it. Fortunately
she never tried to sue anybody.
Adele
North Vancouver, B.C.
(west coast of Canada)
I follow this debate when it comes up, as best I can, but can I put a
question to all those in the know please?
I have been working on creating a pattern most of the afternoon, I
have taken shapes, fans, spiders, dots trails and things and put them
together in a way that fits (as I am working with the design package.
I am not looking at books, but using different shapes to make what I
hope will be a pattern I like and one I can work. I intend to give it
a name (if it comes together and I like it enough) but without looking
at every other torchon pattern book that is in print how can I be sure
I have not repeated someone elses patterns. (I have quite a few but
this is not a repeat of anything in those).
It is not really likely to be an exact of anyone elses, but without
looking how would I know?
I dont intend to sell it, just to use it for a family piece but under
my own name and under the design name I give it.
Sue T
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