Last month when the copyright issue reared its ugly and confusing head, a quilting attorney wrote me and we had a nice discussion. With her permission, I’m sharing a link to a copyright post she wrote on her own blog. I imagine the copyright questions/debates will go on forever but as quilters, the more we can learn, the better off we’ll all be. Thanks Magdalen for a great article and for picking the brain of Hub 1.0 to get us even more info! 
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A good read, Judy. Thanks for the link.
yep, definitely a good read. answers an earlier question i had about a fabric company’s message on the salvedge edge of a fabric. thanks for posting this!
Thanks for the info……it is very confusing but that link really helped. Thumbs up to you!
Thanks for pointing us to this article. Is it just me or is the whole copyright issue getting more convoluted by the minute? What ever happened to fair use? If I buy a pattern & fabric & make a quilt I expect to use it as I see fit, without anybody else claiming license fees or royalties or anything else. Should a pattern or fabric designer think she/he is entitled to more than the purchase price of the articles it will be the last time I purchase their product. Period. I think it’s just awful that the RIAA thinks we should keep buying the same songs over & over & over as formats change and we don’t need the quilting industry showing the same insane tendancies. IMHO, not intending to step on anyone’s toes here.
Thanks, Judy — for your blog, for the shout-out, and for being such a great forum for quilters, cooks, and even lowly attorneys like me. (My favorite lawyer joke: 98% of the profession give the rest of us a bad name…)
I do sympathesize with Linda’s feelings — and I think she’s not alone. But I recently helped a designer (who sells her quilt designs through quilt shows, a website, and wholesale to quilt stores) who saw that a quilt made precisely like her own prototype was being used in a national company’s marketing campaign. Did the company owe her some acknowledgement? As a lawyer, I’m not sure. As a citizen in the quilting community, I rather think they did. I try to acknowledge the designers of the quilts I’ve made, even if my quilt is dramatically different from the designer’s prototype. After all, but for their creativity I couldn’t have made my quilt. I’m not thinking like a lawyer when I do that — I’m thinking I’d like some appreciation if I ever make a unique quilt design. And that’s the point of the golden rule!
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