Card/Wilder Doily and Public Domain

[HomekeepingGran]

Card/Wilder Doily and Public Domain

I know next to nothing about copyright and public domain so I'm hoping you gurus on this topic can satisfy my curiosity. PieceWork Magazine has the "Laura Ingalls Wilder" doily, actually designed by Mary Card and first published in her New Book of Filet Crochet in their May/June '08 issue. If this doily was designed by Mary Card, published in Mary Card's book and presumably now in public domain, why did PieceWork have to get permission from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association to reprint it? I don't understand.

[Amy]

You really need to ask this question directly of the Piecework Magazine editorial staff, because no one here is going to have access to all the information required to answer you.

 

From what I understand, the completed crocheted doily at the museum was indeed made from Mary Card's pattern. Mary Card's pattern is now in the public domain (to the best information that I've been able to find). Several companies online are selling reproductions of her pattern (just as in different book publishing companies are allowed to sell their own versions of books in the public domain, such as Jane Austen's novels.)

 

However, the museum did not have a copy of this pattern. Bendy Carter visited the museum and wrote up a pattern just by looking at the completed piece. This new version is copyrightable, meaning that its artwork and written instructions cannot be duplicated without permission. (Others are still free to write up their own version of the original design and publish that, using their own original artwork and written instructions.) At least, as a non-attorney, this is all according to my knowledge of what can be done with public domain works.

 

Piecework Magazine had to get permission from whoever owns the copyright to this new pattern before they could publish it in their magazine. I do not have any knowledge as to whether Bendy Carter still owned the copyright to the pattern she designed, or if she had sold those rights with the design to the museum or another party.

[Krakovianka]

I can add one piece of information to that, although it is not the crucial bit that you ask. Belinda (Bendy) Carter sold all rights that she might have had in her pattern (and I'm not sure how far that extended, as she was copying an existing design) to the magazine/publishing company that originally published it.

[HomekeepingGran]

Interesting. Like I said, I know nothing about copyright law so this is enlightening. Yes, I'm pretty sure Ms. Carter would have to sell rights to the pattern.

[birdlady1]

A lot of those older patterns haven't been "modernized" with the graphs we've grown accustomed to using. For example, my next project hopefully will be Mary Card's Statue of Liberty. All I have to go by is a photograph of the finished product that was published in Needlework Magazine in 1919.

 

My guess is that, for those patterns entering public domain that are "modernized", new copyrights are applied so permission must be received in order to publish them.