Question about desgining? Pinkroses

[pinkroses]

Okay, I brought a book that had these booties in it; for ladies.

Any hows.

I decided to desgin my own after the first 3 rows of the booties that was in the book I did a whole different stitch.

Added a row of a shell design around the top.

Put a crocheted string of yarn in so as one can make a bow tie out of it.

Question:

After all the changes I made can I say it is my own design?

Remember I only used the first 3 rows.????

Help.

Don't want to be acused of stealing someone elses design.

Thanks pinkroses

[Amy]

I'm not a copyright attorney, so what I'm saying is not official legal advice. If you want to use specific rows from an existing copyrighted pattern without making any changes to them, your best bet is to contact an intellectual property attorney for an official legal opinion OR contact the book publisher to ask for permission. Unless you do one of those two things, according to Crochetville's guidelines (in most cases), you would not be able to post, link to, or otherwise discuss your pattern here.

 

Of course, there can probably only be so many ways to start off a pair of crochet booties. So you could also look at a variety of other bootie patterns. If you see that a good number of them also start the same way (same number of stitches, construction method, etc.), then you might not have to take the above steps to be compliant with copyright law.

 

For instance, a granny square is pretty basic. There's pretty much one standard way to construct your basic granny square. Anybody can write their own instructions on how to make a granny square and have their particular written version be copyrighted.

 

So if the same applies to the booties, and everybody is using the same basic method to start the booties, then it might be that all you'd need to do is rewrite the instructions for those three rows in your own words. You would not be able to use the exact words of the original pattern. Just put the pattern away, look at your bootie, and write everything in your own words.

 

I can't really give you a definitive answer here. Just some basic concepts to follow. Also, think about how you would feel if you wrote the original pattern and somebody else took your three beginning rows and put them in their pattern. Would you think that was a nice thing for them to do? If you wouldn't want somebody doing it to you, then you obviously shouldn't do it to someone else. Maybe that would help you make up your mind.

[pinkroses]

Thanks.

I wouldn't publish mine anyways; but it is always good to know about the laws.

I do understand about how the designers feel about their work being stolen as I have had some of my poems published.

I hate it when someone steals someone's work and tries to make money on it.

Pinkroses

[Flia]

In this case I think you've just looked at how to start a bootie, and then you made your own.

[pinkroses]

Flia.

Yep,

I didn't like their desing because it was to hollie

So, I did another stitch and like it much better and added quite a bit to it to make it look more lady like

Thanks.