I think it would be good for us as a community to come to a conclusion what’s stealing and what isn’t. If you copy paste a pattern and market it as your own (free or paid) it’s stealing. If you create something unique that the world hasn’t seen before it’s not.
But what about all the in betweens? Let’s discuss a couple of examples and see if we can come up with general rules for how we want to handle these things for us. Please share your opinion, feel free to have different ones, but do not get personal, neither to someone else making a comment nor designers of questionable patterns.
My first question is:
I recently learned that a popular designer trademarked a crochet stitch under it’s common name. What do you think, can a designer own a (name for) a crochet/knitting stitch?
I think they can trade mark the stitch as long as it’s complex and they actually spent a lot of time making it. But if it’s something like a half double crochet you can’t trade mark it, and if it’s just something a person randomly just did that many other people also did but didn’t trade mark it they should do it
If a stitch already exists under a common name, it doesn’t matter whether someone tries to trademark it, it won’t hold up in court. Things do get trademarked incorrectly sometimes.
I think, however, that you’re confusing trademarking a stitch with a brand name. It isn’t actually about the stitch itself, it’s just claiming the name for a business so no one else can use that name for business purposes. It by no means has any bearing on the stitch itself, either the use of the stitch or calling for it in a pattern. Have you researched the situation you are referring to? Did someone actually try to trademark the stitch itself?
To be clear, I’m sure that the designer in question would be thrilled if everyone else thought that they could book longer use the stitch, but that isn’t the case. I also don’t like that she getting publicity from her business trademark.
I did, but not to the full extend. I formed my opinion about the creator and personally don’t love the stitch anyway, so no harm done to me.
But it raised the general question for me: Can you claim a stitch for yourself, if yes how complex does it have to be? You can apparently claim a name, what do we think of that though?
I mean, it is possible that someone tries a lot, discovers a different way to combine the possibilities of yarn and hook/needle to something that creates a beautiful pattern, that even after extensive research that person can’t find anywhere. Can you stop people from coping this after you released the first pattern using this stitch pattern? And is it even right, or do we think someone somewhere will have done the same thing before in all the years that fiber arts exist by now, and therefore you can’t claim it anymore?
I still think people that post their amazing work. No matter the age young or older. Should include a date on their post.
That way Ribblr can keep up on who posted it first.
Good luck and God bless you and your families
That doesn’t really solve the problem of who created a pattern first. The pattern could have been a pre-existing one. Say someone has a popular pattern on another site. There isn’t anything like that on Ribblr so someone specifically makes a similar pattern to fill the gap. If the original creator then decides to sell the pattern on Ribblr, the duplicated pattern now appears to be the original if you go by Ribblr’s date. That’s not what you want. If people would list copyright dates on their patterns, that would help determine whose pattern was created first (which may or may not correspond to what order they were added to Ribblr), but most patterns on here aren’t officially copyrighted and, in that case, how can you tell if the date is accurate? I think it’s a lost battle.
My thoughts/opinion on this topic are based on experience and not from any formal research into the topic.
I have watched many YouTube and TikTok videos to learn new stitches. A few of these stitches have been given names by the creator, and others haven’t. The new stitches that have been named have also been used extensively by that creator in many different patterns. The unnamed stitches, i have seen are literally see this beautiful stitch, and they make a small swatch in the video where they proceed to put common stitches together in a unique way (or seems to be unique until I find a similar video).
I personally give credit to a creator of a unique stitch if it has a name, or I refer to the video i found to demonstrate how to do it. This is one reason I have made a suggestion to add an acknowledgement section to the pattern template. I have inserted links to the creators video tutorial on how to do the stitches because they are the ones who did the work of making the stitch pattern. Its only right to give them credit
In the case of an actual finished product pattern, don’t just make a few changes to it and call it your own. I saw a bag pattern that was very interesting, and used a new to me stitch. I did not follow the pattern exactly because I was making a bag for a different purpose. In this instance, I wrote to the creator and asked permission to publish my modifications to the bag so others in need would be able to .ake it. She gave me permission to publish it on this platform, with the understanding that I would not publish it on other platforms. I will give her credit for the original design that inspired me to make the bag. She also asked if she could share the pictures of my bag to her followers because she liked my idea.
So to summarize, if you didn’t come up with the idea of how to combine stitches together to create a certain pattern, don’t take all the credit. Give credit where it is due. It is much better to give the credit for an inspiration than to claim you came up with it on your own. The same goes for finished product patterns, if you saw something and said, I like this, but i would make some changes to make a different end product, it’s still better to ask if you can publish your modifications.
Let’s say it this way, I knew the stitch under the same name way before I heard about the designer and the trademark. But I didn’t look into the details and the timeframe. With me it doesn’t sit right to try to claim something that is simple enough to be called a stitch rather then a pattern as yours, even if it’s just about the name. I think the intention is the same
That’s because I don’t know the answer, I care more about a general rule than a judgement for that specific case. I just mentioned it because before I heard about it I would have said that this question is irrelevant as I never heard of anything like that before. To me stealing has always been about pattern, pictures and maybe ideas, but never stitches or their names
I’d say it might depend on the situation, like, if the stitches were invented by someone else and/or existed for maybe year before being trademarked, it may be a bit Ill-intended.
What I don’t really get is… a crochet stitch? I don’t think there’s any actual benefit to that.
I think it’s more a marketing thing. At least I hope as there are plenty YT videos and probably others too calling it the same, I hope that they don’t have to fear to get sued now
I think what we are talking about here is not the stitch but the stitch pattern. Everything uses a sc, dc, hdc, trbl etc. Those should not be trademarkable but when you put them together to make a unique pattern “stitch” maybe so. I don’t really see the point because it’s still a combination of the aforementioned stitch types. Patterns are copyrighted so the pattern can’t be stolen but where do you benefit from trademarking a stitch pattern. Royalties?
