On Sunday we went out to one of our favourite events - the monthly Coatesville markets. It's such a fun, relaxed market full of great food, produce and crafts. We haven't been since before Christmas and I noticed a real upswing in the number of stalls selling handmade softies. Actually I should say Softies with a capital S because I'd say 75-80% of them come directly from patterns published in the books Softies and More Softies by Viking Australia and Softies by Therese Laskey, plus a couple from Melly and Me patterns. Seriously. So what does one do in these cases?
I had a really good search through my two Softies books and couldn't find anything about copyright or selling items made from those patterns which seems unusual - does that make them fair game? Would seem to. I don't know about the Laskey or Melly and Me patterns, though I'd be surprised if they didn't have some sort of restriction. So there I am at the markets on a beautiful sunny day, my daughter falling in love with the beautiful stuffed toys - and they were lovely - and not able to enjoy the wonderfulness because I knew where those patterns had come from and I don't feel they should be selling them. But on the other hand it's just nice to see decent toys available at extremely reasonable prices (possibly too reasonable actually). Sigh. Moral conflict sucks. There used to be a woman there selling some toys from those books and I wasn't sure if I should say anything at that point, but now she seems to be selling more her own stuff and there's these new stalls with the knock-offs. I'm so not the kind of person to confront them over that, and hey, maybe it's actually legal if there's no disclaimer in the book? So what do you do? Look the other way? Blab to the market organisers? Tell the authors? How would they enforce sellers at an out-of-the-way country market? Buy them and save myself the trouble of making them? Or end up buying a legit pattern for a Melly and Me giraffe because your daughter and her friend just about wet themselves over the ones for sale? Well in the immediate future probably the latter, but the other options are still there...
ETA: it seems I might have been talking out my ear on this one (legally speaking if not ethically), read what Marielle has to say in the comments).
