In article ,
Andy Dingley wrote:
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.

An overly broad answer. Given the right set of specific circumstances it
_could_well_ involve a violation of copyright statutes.

Copyright law is _very_ 'fact specific' to particular situations.

Virtually *any* statement that says something always "is" or "is not"
a particular way is going to be in error, including _this_ statement.

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.

WRONG. See: Title XVII, chapter 13, U.S. Code. (17 USC 1301 et. seq.)
available online at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/

For U.S. statutes expressly providing for copyright protection of designs.

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.

The photocopying of the drawings is a copyright violation.
*BUILDING* the object from the drawings is a 'derivative work'.
Which may, or may not, be a violation in and of itself.
(Building from infringing plans *is* a violation. an 'aggravating' violation,
that increases the severity of penalties for the infringement of copying
the plans, in point of legal fact.)

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.

"Derivative work" still applies..

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).

In the U.S. it *is* copyright infringement, in legal fact. You have
exceeded the permissions granted by the copyright owner.

They *do* sue for 'copyright infringement', not "breach of contract".

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.

*THAT* depends on jurisdiction. In a number of (even well-developed)
countries, "Public domain" is _not_ legally recognized. In those
countries you _cannot_ renounce copyright -- all you can do is aggressively
'fail to enforce' it.