Susan started me thinking about this again. Very often on the boards you read about the “20%” rule…if a design is changed by 20% (how the hell can you know what constitutes 20%?!), then you are not violating any one’s rights. WRONG!!! My Needle Arts magazine just published an article written by a copyright lawyer that specifically states: “The [copyright] law uses the standard of substantially similar as their ruler for infringement. That can be confusing. A good rule of thumb is that when the average person can recognize the original work from the infringing work it infringes on the original designer’s copyright.” - pp 23, Needle Arts, Volume XXXIII, Number 2, June 2007
There is more info here on the EGA site, The Right Side of Copyrights.
Susan also found this link: What Rights Does Copyright Grant?: Substantial Similarity which really makes the point clear.
It is not often that we hear of one ID designer going after another for copyright infringement, but the more I read about this issue, there are a few folks who could definitely go after a few others. I think we need to be more careful and more respectful.
[...] There are a couple of links in this brief post about Copyright Law: Substantial Similarity. [...]
Pingback by Stealing Designs and the “IDEA” of Custom « Taoknitter — March 15, 2009 @ 6:53 pm