Where do you draw the line?

[cassdarrow]

I want to write a pattern for a sweater. Now, there are only a couple basic ways to make a sweater. You've got your seamless bottom up or top down method. Then you've got your knit it in pieces and sew it together method.

I've made both kinds. Given all that, where is the line between "using what you know from experience", and "copying".

I'd rather not write a pattern at all if someone is going to accuse me of copying. But I know the kind of sweater I want, and the fact is, it's out there, cause there is just the one way to do it.

Which brings up another question, this one more hypothetical, but still a struggle. How do you write a pattern for something if you have never made one to find out where to go? Conversly, how do you write a pattern if you've never made a garment like it before?

[BethyM99]

I guess the question is, why are you writing the pattern? Why does the world need *your* sweater pattern.. what is unique about it?

If there's something unique about it, then it's not copied.... sure, basic construction is basic construction. What makes your idea special!?

[lifetapestry]

Copying a PATTERN is pretty much the same as plagarizing a paragraph or section from a book or article in a paper you might write for school.

A copyright on a pattern protects the EXPRESSION of the pattern most prominently. That means that the only way you can "copy" a pattern is if you go to sweater pattern A and write the same words, or mostly the same words, for how to make the pattern. But if you describe even the exact same techniques but using different words, you still haven't "copied" it.

But nobody owns the technique of making a sweater from the bottom up, or for sewing 2 pieces of a sweater together. Or short rows or k2togs or k1, m1, etc. What they do own is the words that convey how to create that sweater, and the "derivative" (i.e. product) from the pattern. So I think it would be pretty hard to copy a pattern if you aren't actually looking at it as you are writing yours. If your sweater looks exactly like someone else's sweater even if your instructions are worded differently, you may still be a "copier". But your "copy" would have to have some unique element to be recognized as someone else's, though.

HTH,
Karla