5-by-6 Block Format on Quilt is Copyrightable

This is a sad day for the public domain.

According to the new ruling by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the five-by-six block format on a quilt with the alphabetical arrangement of the letters in the first 26 blocks and four icons in the last four blocks is copyrightable and therefore can be protected by copyright. The ruling can be found at:

     http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/2nd/007300.html

I found that very hard to believe. The court should know better that the layout of any two-dimensional block format with anything filled in it is a pure idea and therefore is not copyrightable. Filling the first 26 blocks with the letters and the remaining blocks with anything else is also an idea and therefore is not copyrightable. These ideas are commonly found in different places for kids such as children books, posters, and toys.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 6,230

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Mon Dec 10 2001 - 23:05:50 GMT