March 24, 2011

Poor little Peahen!

Last week I tidied the room (or cupboard, it's that small) where I work, and although it's much tidier, a couple of significant things were misplaced in the process.  Firstly, I lost all of my grey felted wool.  That's 3 jumpers all together, a dark, mid and a light grey.  A big deal since at the time I was in the middle of making a (grey) Raccoon. And secondly, I couldn't find the, still unfinished, Peahen.

Thankfully, both have since surfaced.  The grey jumpers were all at the bottom of my rather large scrap bag (no idea how they got there) and the Peahen was in a box underneath a box of books.  Not very fitting for a little Peahen.  So she has now been finished off and is finally in the shop (sold, thank you)


On another subject, while working on the Peahen given it's more or less the same pattern as the Peacock from the Little Birds book, I have been giving PDF patterns some more thought.  The more patterns I continue to produce, the more the likelihood is of items made by these patterns turning up for sale on Etsy.  Normally my policy is that any patterns or tutorials are not for commercial use, but what I'm finding with that route, is that some will respect that, and others won't.  So in order to flush the state of mind away of constantly feeling like it would need policing, I am seriously considering of changing this to allow small businesses to sell items made from my patterns on the condition that they credit 'Lucykate Crafts...' with the design and link to where the pattern is available (and don't undercut me on price!).

What do you think?

8 comments:

Kate said...

I have been having similar thoughts...

Alison said...

Sounds reasonable, but you need a proper licensing agreement in place

greetingarts said...

I think that would be fantastic, but you should also specify that they would not be able to mass market the product, that it would still need to be handmade on a small scale, right?

Mama Bear said...

greetingarts is correct, good idea to have that in the 'paperwork'

If people are wanting to steal your ideas, you may as well get a bit of credit and cash out of it too - all your hard work has been done to make it all happen!

Valspierssews said...

The internet has opened a can of worms. Most people wouldn't question a hand made item being sold in a garage sale. One can only hope that your designs are not used to mass produce items. I wouldn't sell something online that wasn't my design. I would imagine the best you could hope for is a line like Handcrafted by me and designed by you with a link to your site. I would think that legally you only have copyright on the design and it should be acknowledged as yours.

Sandies' Patch said...

Quite right!
Although they will never be quite like the ones you've created!

Sandie xx

Hoola Tallulah said...

I only create for fun (far too amateur to sell my wares), and have never shared my patterns, yet I have seen people rip off some of my doll face designs to a T. Sucks.
By giving people the opportunity to sell items from your designs respectfully at least you will reap the rewards by way of traffic through your own shop and blog, but I don't doubt that some people will still flout your guidelines, such is human nature (for some scumbags at least).
I love your peahen! Can't wait to see the raccoon!

DangAndBlast! said...

You can't copyright the product, only the instructions (as words, etc., same as if it were a book). That's why knockoffs of designer clothing are perfectly legal, so long as they don't copy the logo/name (which is copyrighted/trademarked). Seems to be a common misconception that it's not only not nice ("scumbags") but also illegal to use someone else's instructions to make something for sale without credit.

That said, if you ask for credit, people will generally give you credit. If you ask for payment of a licensing fee, you'll also get (generally) quite a few takers.

(IANAL, but I dabble in copyright law for work.)