Articles / Court: Sewing Patterns are Data, Not Code

Tabberone Logo
Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won
not tay ber own

Tabbers Temptations www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/ Home | Site Index | Disclaimer | Email Me!

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
Edmund Burke

The Tabberone™ Archives
These articles concern what we consider major trademark and copyright issues. They are usually reproduced with the original source referenced. Bear in mind, these articles are copyrighted and commercial use without permission of the authors may be considered infringement. The intended use here is educational, commentary and non-commercial. The reason they are reproduced in the Tabberone™ Archives, as opposed to just providing a link, is because links disappear and pages are removed. That presents a messy confirmation process that is annoying to the browser (you) but also presents a credibility issue. We do not claim any rights in these pieces. Do not regard the absence of a copyright statement or © to mean the article is not copyrighted. Some sites do not have a copyright statement.
When an article or a comment is posted on the internet by the copyright owner, the owner is seeking a world-wide, 24/7 audience; sometimes for a limited amount of time, sometimes indefinitely. In essence, an internet posting intentionally relinquishes one's copyright for exclusivity because the owner has posted it on the internet to been seen by everyone, everywhere. The Tabberone™ Archives non-commercial duplication of the posting is simply a continuance of the original wishes of the copyright owner. We post these articles for reference, for commentary and for confirmarion of our position.

Source:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/08/court_sewing_pa.html
June 29, 2008. Content has not been altered except to reformat for easier reading and to remove advertisement.

Court: Sewing Patterns are Data, Not Code
By Wired Blogs August 31, 2006 | 4:17:32 AM

A federal appeals court has just dealt a setback to the embroidery industry's copyright crackdown.
Yes, the embroidery industry is taking on sewing scofflaws. They even have an RIAA-like association, called the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition, with real lawyers who apparently extract settlements from suspected embroidery design pirates. The ESPC website says the problem is "just as prominent" as pirated movies and music.

One ESPC member company, Action Tapes, went so far as to sue a Minnesota sewing machine store for buying and renting out the company's sewing cartridges. From today's decision:

Action Tapes has assembled a portfolio of graphic embroidery designs which it embeds on disk-like memory cards that enable computer-run sewing machines to stitch the embedded design on fabric and apparel. Kelly Mattson is the owner of a sewing machine supplies store in northern Minnesota. Action Tapes commenced this action for willful copyright infringement, alleging that Mattson has repeatedly violated the Rental Amendments Act by renting Action Tapes memory cards to her customers without Action Tapes' permission.

Under copyright's first sale doctrine nobody can stop you from reselling or renting out copyrighted material, like books and movies, that you've legally acquired. But with the 1990 Computer Software Rental Amendments Act, Congress carved out an exception for computer programs, prohibiting anyone from renting, leasing or lending them without permission of the copyright holder.
So the case turned on whether Action Tapes' electronically-stored embroidery designs are computer programs or not. It's an interesting question. The statute defines a program as "a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer to bring about a certain result."
The Action Tapes cartridges contain code that tells computerized sewing machines how to stitch the embroidery pattern. "In essence," the plaintiff wrote in an appellate brief, "the memory card 'tells the machine what to do.'"
Of course, the disks I rent from the video store tell my DVD player (certainly as much a computer as a sewing machine) what to do -- at the very least, what to display on my TV. Data doesn't become a program just because a computer interprets it and takes action based on what it reads. I say if it's not written in a language that's Turing-complete, it's not a program.
The judge who heard the Action Tapes case applied her own analysis and concluded that real computer programs are interactive. She dismissed Action Tapes' complaint. Today the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision (.pdf), though on different grounds: it seems Action Tapes couldn't prove it properly registered the embroidery code as software with the U.S. Copyright Office.
If you think you might be in possession of pirated embroidery patterns, you can apply for a one-time amnesty (.pdf) from the ESPC. Be prepared to turn in your warez and pay a $300 fine.
Wired.com © 2009 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.

Federal Court Cases
Alphabetically | by Federal Circuit | by Subject | by Court Quotations

Federal Statutes
Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. 5 | Digital Millenium Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. 12 | Lanham Act 15 U.S.C. 22