when you buy the plans, it probably says what you can /can't do.

 

Bill, when you want to use a designers plans commercially he will usually just sell one set of plans to you at a higher price. Some might want to lease you the copyrights (i.e. you pay a small royalty for each item you produce), but that is kind of a rip-off because someone else will just sell it to you once.

 

I think that Rob M. has hit it on the head. I think that if you are going to make something that I designed for a profit then that is wrong. Also there is a hugh difference between being inspired by Frank Loyd wright or Same Maloof and simply just ripping off an idea or design. I think Mr. Maloofs rockers have to be one of the most copied designs out there. There are some many woodworkers out there that are just making his rocker and putting there names on them. I think that is wrong. If you give the credit where it is due, then that is a different story.

I think the biggest problem is for one person to prove that any certain design is completly theirs. And then trying to foght that in court would cost more money than it is worth.

Half the fun of making furniture for me at least is designing it myself. There's nothing better than seeing your own ideas come to life. Designing is not that hard, believe me if I can do it anyone can.

 

Maybe that's why I don't use very many plans. I look at a picture and get an idea in my head and go fromthere. I have a few things on my website that I got from somebody else, but I didn't alter it and call it mine, I simply posted it inthe same format in which I got it. I left their name on it if their name was on it in the first place.

When I saw the plans for the Greene& Greene Side Table, none of it was the same as I had in my head, except for the breadboard thingies on the side. My legs were thicker, longer and a different type of wood. My aprons were thinner. It did have a simular look to it, so it could be recognised as a Greene & Greene replica.

 

Agree with Obi…
End of story
John

 

I made my table EXACTLY as in the picture. HA

 

I work in the software business, talk about intellectual capital law suits …. I think these things were invented to two purposes, to give simple people like me headaches and to make sure there is always something to keep our courts busy. What we need here is a simple solution …

How about this, if I'm going to make a pair of tables for my self then we are all pretty much agreed that it's ok. If I make a pair to sell or 10 to sell, and I plan to do to make money, simply buy a copy of the plans for each table I sell and include that as a part of the cost of the uint.

I'm a firm believer in "you reap what you sow." For me, I wouldn't dream of chaeting someone out of their rightful income. But at the same time you have to ask … who invented the box? I think it's up to each of us to do what we feel is right, and I hope that the best in human nature will prevail, I do what I can to see that it does.

Just a few thoughts. More than that gives me a headache
-Ray

 

sounds good to me.
I hope that no one gets a heachache over this topic!
I think that we each know what is right and we each make our own choices based on our beliefs.

 

Boy, did I open a can of worms!

 

Can of worms…might even have some bugs and a few slugs in that can.

 

"cans of worms" make people think and clarify what they believe in.
it may be messy but it's an important process.
Hopefully people can share their opinions without being offended by others who also have their own opinions.
And then there are those who just read the discussion and gain new insight into a topic

 

Just to add a little more to this whole thing. A reader asked a question similiar to this, "Can I make something from plans in your magazine and sell it for profit." The editors response was basically if you can sell it go for it, but you can't download and sell the actual plans as they are copywrited.

While the magizine didn't give a limit on the number you could make and sell, which wasn't the question anyway, I have order plans that do put limits on how many I could sell. One plan I ordered said that I could make up to 120 and if I planned on making more contact them for royalty pricing. Another plan said I could only make 5.

Because of the huge differences I try to come up with my own plans using pictures for inspiration. The only time I'll order a plan is if it is EXACTLY what I want to build.

 

It's times like this when I can really appreciate my "level" of work. I can build something and feel confident that the Designer will never recognize it OR want to claim Designer rights. Someday maybe - but not just yet ).

 

Roundabout22,

I think that your response really does hit the nail on the head. While there have been many thoughts on the legality of this or the legality of that, or even the business ethics of a great many situations, it all boils down to one simple issue. It boils down to how the actual designer reads the letter of the law, and how much they believe in the fair use of their own design plans, and how much they feel that a table is a table is a table.

If we take this back to the music industry analogy, you can easil find bands that are very specific about the fact that they will under no circumstances allow people to copy and distribute their music without some complensation to the original band. Metallica is one of those bands, as they were one of the original bands suing Napster. On the other hand, The Dave Matthews Band will allow people to record concerts with professional recording equipment, sometimes even in the venue sound booth, and freely distribute the concert material. There are even bands who don't give a care whether someone makes money off their music or not.

If the designer takes the trouble to limit the number of copies that can be made for profit, then the copier should ethically and legally respect that decision and pay the designer their requested price.

Being a teacher, I have to deal with this issue in many ways. I particularly liked the encyclopedia analogy mentioned earlier.

Peace and Happy Sawdust Making to all

 

I purchased a plan that had the make 5 of them and then pay us a royalty. But what is strange is their bench is different from the original made in the late 1800's. So I'm making mine like the original version and not using their plans.

What was even stranger the picture on the cover of the plans was like the original and the detail plans on the inside didn't match the picture on the outside. I called them and their response if you don't want the plan then send it back.

It looks like the changes were to track who made the bench from their plans. Some of them were real dumb.

 

Here's the way I understand it.

You can sell a finished project but not a "do it yourself kit".

The reason for this is that when you bye a plan you get drawings of individual pieces and instructions on how to build it. If you make the individual pieces from wood with instructions to build it then you are in fact copying the plan. If you build the project it is no longer the plan it is now a something else than the plan.

Here I'll put it in other terms.

If you read a book on a audio tape it's still the same words but if you take every word from that book and change the order then it's not the same book. Same goes to music if you play a song on a different instrument it's still the same song but if you change the notes around it's something different.

Even better take a poster and cut it into a hundred pieces and glue them in a mosaic. It's not the poster.

 

couildnt a person just change the finished product slightly so it doesnt exactly copy the plans?

IMHO if you make and sell plans you better realize somebody is going to build and try to sell whatever the plans show. dont want someone to sell your intellectual property? dont release plans for anyone to purchase

basically unless you have a patent on the final product i think its free for anyone to copy. unethical? probably, but certainly legal

 

I hope I'm understanding your argument correctly but, by the same (in my opinion false) analogy then, if you took all the pieces of the chair and put them together in a different way it would be something different wouldn't be a chair anymore. And just as if you put all the words of a book together in a different order then it might be a collection of words but it wouldn't be a book. Nor would a re-arrangement of the notes be a song (assuming any random re-arrangement doesn't happen to make a viable song). Who'd want to make or for that matter buy any of these different things anyway?

 

Straight from the Government…

United States Copyright Office:

"...Useful Articles
A "useful article" is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian
function that is not merely to portray the appearance of
the article or to convey information. Examples are clothing,
furniture, machinery, dinnerware, and lighting fixtures. An
article that is normally part of a useful article may itself be a
useful article-an ornamental wheel cover on a vehicle, for
example.
Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian
aspects of such works of craftsmanship. It may, however,
protect any pictorial, graphic, or sculptural authorship that
can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of
an object. Thus a useful article may have both copyrightable
and uncopyrightable features. For example, a carving on
the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware
could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair
or flatware itself could not.
Some designs of useful articles may qualify for protection
under the federal patent law. For information, visit the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office website at www.uspto.gov or call
(800) 786-9199.
Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends
only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial,
graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design
of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or
photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted,
but that does not give the artist or photographer the
exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same
design…."

 

What I understand form HorizontalMike's post.

You can use a pattern to make the chair and sale it but if the pattern has a flower or a leaf on it then that part of it should be left out.

 

Yep, I think that is it. You can't put a Stickley Emblem on that Stickley piece of furniture that you just built and want to sell. But you can build and sell as many as you want.

 

I'm pretty sure if you consulted a lawyer, they would advise you to err on the side of caution, and would probably recommend that you make enough changes to the design that it could not be mistaken for a reproduction of that magazine's plans.

Copyright law would protect the plans themselves from reproduction, and patent law would protect the invention if there's something novel about it (i.e., not obvious to someone with average skill in the art). Until recently, I would have suspected your question was more an issue of trademark law, which boils down to likelihood of brand confusion. Maybe a woodworking company produced the plans with the intent of manufacturing the items themselves, so they want to claim sole right to build and sell that particular product design. It could be that they donated the plans to the magazine in hopes that they could foster demand for the product. Or maybe the person who drew up the plans wants them to be his/her gift to the world, and he/she doesn't want a mega corporation to copy the product and profit enormously without giving the original author even an acknowledgement for the design.

Unfortunately, with the advent of 3D scanners, modeling software, and affordable 3D printers, the issue is being muddied even further. There are actually companies springing up to produce DRM (Digital Rights Management) solutions for physical objects so you can't use a 3D scanner and 3D printer to replicate the object. For example, a ruggedized cellphone case might sell for $40, but suppose you can print it for $10. The obvious next step is to start selling yours online for twice what they cost you and half what the original manufacturer charges. But maybe yours is of inferior quality. If the company offers any sort of warranty, but you've flooded the market with your cheap knock-offs and people are sending yours into the original manufacturer for warranty replacement, it could bankrupt the company, or at least hurt their bottom line until they figure out what's going on. (In terms of woodworking projects, yours might be higher-quality than the mass-produced versions, so this example doesn't translate perfectly-but you probably get the point.)

Getting back to the example, the original producer might have sunk tens of thousands of dollars into testing, certification, materials research, market research including focus groups, and advertising. And thanks to all their hard work, you can make a clone with one or two days' lunch money. The case's design would be fingerprinted such that the major 3D scanning or printing software will identify it as a DRMed item and refuse to reproduce it. The same logic that someone might use to argue in favor of DRMing 3D-printed objects could be applied to woodworking, as well.

If it's a pretty standard design that isn't much different than anything else on the market, or if you're building just a few to sell to local customers, I would think you're unlikely to run into problems, but an attorney is the only person who can assess your actual risk. If it's something really unique and someone might confuse your creation with something from a particular high-end furniture store or a particular toy maker, then the other producer of those products could claim that you're stealing their invention and trying to profit off of their R&D and marketing dollars. If you have a small shop, then in the end it will just boil down to whether you want to spend $10,000+ in court for a 50/50 chance at getting permission to continue selling the product, but as a lawyer might tell you, they could also potentially sue you for any real or imagined damages.

 

Rob,
My post in #44 is a direct quote taken from the:

U.S. Copyright Office · Library of Congress · 101 Independence Avenue, SE · Washington, DC 20559 · www.copyright.gov

circular 40 reviewed: 09 ⁄ 2012 Printed on recycled paper-u.s. government printing office: 2012-xxx-xxx ⁄ xx,xxx

I have not attempted to interpret nor change anything. And furniture is specifically listed as a "useful article" upon which copyright does not apply. "...Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian
aspects of such works of craftsmanship…."

I am not sure it can get much clearer than that. Build all the furniture you want.

Again, the entire U.S. Copyright Office article is here:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ40.pdf

 

HorizontalMike, that is a correct statement about copyright law, but copyright is only one branch of IP law. Even then, there's the letter of the law and the spirit of the law to consider. According to the letter of the law, you're violating someone's copyright every time you load a web page, because your computer is creating a local copy of the page that resides on a server (or at least, that's how it used to be…but now with content dynamically generated on the client-side, perhaps the page on your computer would be considered a derivative work). I don't think anyone would object to the interpretation that the content was put on the web server specifically so it could be copied to your computer solely for the purpose of your personal consumption, in which case you're still honoring the spirit of the law (as long as you don't then repost the content on your own web server or-shudder-print it on paper without getting permission from the copyright owner).

Unfortunately, this ambiguity is what opens everything up to interpretation. I speak from personal experience when I say that intellectual property attorneys can bend the rules or present an interpretation of the law such that it seems like they're downright abusing both the letter and the spirit of the law.

When it comes to IP law-and I'm sure other types of law-anyone with enough money can sue you for anything, without even proving you've done anything wrong. If you decide to fight it, you pretty much have to have $10k on hand just to go through the motions in the court system-in some places, it costs even more. Sometimes the sole purpose is simply to squash you as a competitor or drive you into the ground so they can acquire your unique business assets on the cheap.

For example, my family's small business came under attack for its name, even though any reasonable person should be able to tell the difference. Suppose there were two companies that sell cardboard boxes, Big Boxes and Biggie's Box Superstore. You'd think most people would be smart enough to tell the difference, right? Even though the other company only had trademarked their logo because they probably didn't qualify for a word mark (you generally cannot trademark a descriptive name), they claimed that our company name was similar enough to the name in their logo to cause confusion. If we hadn't had a website, maybe it never would have come to their attention. But they claimed our markets overlapped because we both have websites and someone in our small town could potentially order one of their products online and have it shipped to an apartment across the street from our storefront, so they argued that someone could confuse our company for theirs, or vice-versa. We tried to fight it for a little while and even sought advice from one of the top law firms in our state, as well as from another business owner who did try to fight and lost, and both said if we had $10k to throw away, we could try to keep our name, but it would still essentially come down to the flip of a coin whether or not we would get to keep the name. So we changed one word in our name.

In another story, my employer recently emerged triumphant in a nasty 6-year-long court case in which a much larger company with practically bottomless pockets accused us of stealing their invention. Nevermind that the invention they filed with the patent office didn't work because it was not only incomplete, but would have been impractical to use even if someone could come up with the missing parts (patent law requires you to submit enough information for someone to reproduce the fully-functional invention).

Anyway, the lawsuit was very expensive and lasted long enough to open up the market to multiple lower-end competitors who could pursue some of our larger customers while we couldn't (some customers have a blanket policy of not purchasing from a vendor that's under litigation). And at no point did the other company specifically state which part or parts of our product infringed their patents (which were bogus anyway, but that's another story), even after we provided their counsel with all the details of how our product works.

So if you're going to build and sell stuff exactly as documented in the plans which specifically prohibit that, either get a lawyer's opinion (if possible, in writing if you think you'll be selling a lot of these); or don't ask the question, keep a low profile, and don't produce enough of these things that anyone would ever notice, much less feel inclined to send you a cease & desist order.

 

"You can't put a Stickley Emblem on that Stickley piece of furniture that you just built and want to sell…"

I'm assuming since you "just built" it, it isn't actually a piece of Stickley furniture-in which case, it would be a Stickley look-alike, but not a real Stickley.

Now, applying the Stickley example to the excerpts of copyright law that HorizontalMike shared earlier:

"For example, a carving on the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair or flatware itself could not."

This means the Stickley emblem is copyrighted and you may not reproduce the emblem. Although the design of the chair or flatware cannot be protected by copyright law, it can be protected by a patent if it meets certain criteria, such as being non-obvious to someone with average skill in the art of furniture or flatware design.

"For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design…."

To be honest, I'm too ignorant (or deprived, take your pick) to know what those pictures and graphical designs are in the Stickley emblem (maybe yokes?), but let's say they're medieval torture devices. In that case, this is saying that the Stickley emblem which contains these medieval torture devices is copyrighted, but you may freely depict these types of torture devices in your own original pictures. It is an independent example, and is not in any way referencing the previous example of a carving in the back of a chair or floral relief design on silverware.

Assuming both the Stickley emblem's copyright has not expired and the Stickley brand's trademark has not been abandoned, you would be violating the copyright if you reproduce your own copies of the emblem, and you would be violating the trademark if you put a Stickley emblem on a non-genuine "Stickley" product.

On the other hand, if you're performing restoration work on an original Stickley, or the copyright has expired and nobody who owned the trademark is using it in commerce, you'll be fine…unless your lawyer tells you otherwise.