On 2 Jun 2005 11:35:38 -0700, "TrailRat"
wrote:

The question goes along these lines. Is approaching a flat-pack
supermarket or furniture store with the intention of copying a piece
illegal.

No it isn't (generally).

A few of the answers state that it must be a breach of copyright laws.

No.

There are two things about copyright that are generally applicable
worldwide. Firstly it's automatic - you don't need to "register"
anything for copyright to be applied, although you can choose to relax
this copyright, or to permits its use by others.

Secondly (and most relevantly here) there are several things you can't
copyright. Designs are one of them (titles of works are another). You
can copyright the _description_ of a design, but not the design itself.

So if you find the drawings of a design, photocopy them, then use them
to build your copy then you've breached copyright. But you did it to the
copyright of the _drawing_, not the item, and you did it when you did
the photocopying of the drawing not when you made the copy of the item.

What happens if you built it quickly from the original drawings, then
returned them ? Well you haven't breached the copyright. You may have
committed some other act to obtain them (perhaps breaking and entering),
but it wasn't a breach of copyright.

This leads us to the question of magazine designs and building them for
profit. In general, the magazine (or maybe an author) retains its
copyright on the design drawing and you as a purchaser of the magazine
are granted a _licence_ to use those drawings for some purpose .This
might be for admiration only, it's probably to build one or more copies
for non-profit use and it _might_ be a full license to commercially
produce them - but that would be somewhat unusual. If you breach these
terms, then you're in breach of the _licence_ they granted, but you
still haven't broken the copyright itself (this may vary locally,
depending on how the law is phrased).

It's also possible to renounce the copyright entirely and to place it
into the public domain. This has much the same effect as giving everyone
a licence to dop whatever they want with it, but it's legally distinct.

You also can't "steal" a copyright. Theft has a legal definition, and
copying something is outside it (you need to deprive the original owner
of it, not just reduce their benefit of it). In countries where the
legal system is controlled by large corporations, such as the USA, then
copyright infringement may of course be treated as any act up to and
including terrorism.


So how can you protect a design ? In general, this is possible,
difficult, expensive, time-limited and requires some explicit action to
register this design right (i.e. the opposite of automatic copyright).
These rights are not standard between countries (very much so), but
they're usually only for short periods and may or may not be renewable.
It's quite rare for designers other than Alessi, Starck and their ilk to
go as far as registering as design right.

There's also the question of trademarks - these are somewhere inbetween
copyright and design rights. They require some action to register, but
they're relatively cheap and long-lasting. It's notable that Gustav
Stickley was vehement in defending his compass trademark and the
"Craftsman" name, but was very lax over the designs themselves and even
the name "Stickley".


If you want clear information on some useful ways to apply copyright,
with country-specific boilerplate, then a look at the Creative Commons
project http://creativecommons.org will be useful.

--
Cats have nine lives, which is why they rarely post to Usenet.