"Lucille" wrote:

The Nora Corbett cross stitch fairy in today's 1-2-3 newsletter reminded me
way too much of Lynn Nicoletti's delightful Thimbelina. Thimbelina hangs
proudly on my den wall and she's innovative and clever and lots of fun.
This one looks to me like a rip-off, but not quite. Is there some kind of
law that states you can't use someone else's design and call it your own?

Copyright doesn't really apply in this case, because you cannot
copyright the idea of a fairy sitting on a purple pincushion.

Those two patterns have far too many differences to be considered
infringing. Sure, there are some similarities, but how many different
ways *can* you do a fairy on a pincushion, after all? And Nora's
cartainly goes with the other fairies in the Stitching Fairies series,
which are less elaborate than most of her fairies.
(http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=MIR-KIT11 is
the Floss Fairy.)

(IMO, Passion Ricamo has done far more faithful "copies" of Nora's
stuff, and many retailers sell both.)

--
Jenn Ridley :