Selling photocopies

[i-once-was-bump]

Hi everyone, I decided to sell some books that I would have expected to get over $100 each.

Someone is listing photocopies of very similar patterns from $4 to $8 each.

This, to me, will reduce the values of my books so I am annoyed.

If they were to sell the same books at half the price I would charge then I would have to suck it up.

Are 'enhanced photos and copy of a pattern from her own collection' allowed on eBay?

[curraone]

Well it's probably too late to ask Da Vinci if we can print copies of his art.

[imastawka]

What can I copy and re-use without a copyright owner's permission? | National Library of Australia (...

[digital*ghost]

Designs can't be subject to copyright, but expressions of a design can be - this generally means it's a breach of copyright to produce copies of an existing pattern, but it's fine to recreate it and sell your own version. (It's all about ideas vs artistic expression - you need to patent designs to protect them, copyright applies to artistic expression, so it's not for the design itself, but the artistic choices made to show a pattern, like fonts for the text etc, original wording / instructions, stuff like that).

Unless the patterns are in the public domain, anyway - then you can do whatever you like with them. 

[chameleon54]

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@namnie wrote:

If it’s breach of copyright then report them

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Ebay specifically notes in its policies that the report of breech of copyright must come from the copyright holder. Ebay will ignore reports coming from general users.  Realistically they have no way of knowing whether Joe Bloggs reporting a competitor for copyright breech is genuine and they dont have the resources to check and  verify every random accusation made by selling competitors.

[domino-710]

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@curraone wrote:

Well it's probably too late to ask Da Vinci if we can print copies of his art.

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Check it out - copyright does have a life. lol

[i-once-was-bump]

Back home again, I have several tartan pattern books and the person/s selling copies has unusually similar furniture and other props for photos in my books. These books are copyright and the enhanced copies are 99% similar to photos in my books.
The books are about both technique and patterns.
The books have 140 patterns so selling at $8 each is a real little money earner $1,120 to be exact. As they might sell multiples of some styles then the profit is endless.
I think I wasted my time getting my account up to date so I could sell on ebay again.