In the early 80s I was publishing a club newsletter which contained quite a number of my original designs. Many of those designs were picked up by, and republished by "Model Rocketeer" magazie: for example, my flying Pyramid, the Infinite Square (an all square version of the Infinite Loop tube-stabilized design), and the Moondipper (made of styrofoam cups)

By publishing plans for my designs, I hoped people would build and enjoy them as much as I had. I suppose I assumed that I would somehow be credited for the idea. Now I see some on my designs being offered for sale as kits. It never occurred to me to copyright my designs. Should I have?

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Lawrence William
SAM #0422

I think you should always release anything in public domain copyrighted. I wont release anything otherwise. Embarrassingly, I have tons of unpublished stuff, yet to see the light of day.

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Patriot
464 CMASS
MMMSClub.org
NAR #92766

Just do a "Poor Man's" copyright to your designs. Those are suppose to be legitimate proof. You can't copyright a recipe, but you sure can copyright a work of art.

BTW, a "Poor Man's" copyright (sealing the item in an envelope and mailing it to yourself) has never, as far as I know, been recognized by any court in the US. It would be too easy to fake, the proof is ruined when you open the envelope to use it, and ... if you're going to mail it anyway, why not mail it to the Library of Congress and officially register the copyright?

-- Roger

I will answer your original question with ONE word, NO !

The new auto-copyright laws are a joke to protect the stupid and ill-prepared.
I for one am sick and tired of laws designed to protect the lowest-common-denominator idiots in society.
Those LOSERS NOT doing their due diligence DESERVE TO BE FLEECED !!!

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

I am behind you 100% we are in a nanny state, but a small amount of regulation such as copyright protection is valuable to commerce. Perhaps it and many regulatory basics should be a law not a regulation. As we saw with the BATF suit the problem with regulation is it presumes the regulator is both expert and right, and only the regulator can go into a monologue with itself to change regulation. People can comment on proposed changes in FedReg, but the outcome is a monologue and protected by the courts with a presumption of correctness. That legal standard itself is the entire problem with regulation generally.

Just "paying attention" Jerry

One consideration is exactly what you are trying to protect: an art design or a scientific design. Copyrights will protect your claim as the originator of a piece of art. And apparently they are fairly cheap. Patents on the other hand seem to be a lot more complicated and expensive.

reference:
http://www.differencebetween.com/di...ght-and-patent/

Differences and Similarities

Most people have confusion in copyright and patent. To magnify the difference between these terms, here are some points.

Copyrights are arts based, while patent are science-based protections.
Copyright cover the works of authorship like literary, musical and dramatic work. On the other hand, patent protects those inventions that are new and useful.
For applying copyright authorship must be original and real medium. The requirements for patent are new, useful and non-obvious.
As the authorship work created, protection from copyright begins. While, patent protection is not applicable, until patent is properly issued.
Copyright is issued to author until his/her life plus 50-70 years, depends upon country law. On the other side, patent protection time is different in different countries. Normally, patent provide protection for 10-20 years from the date of application.
A copyright is almost free and paper work is not very complicated. On the contrary, applying process for patent is much difficult. The reason is that checking process of invention is so lengthy and costly


Read more: http://www.differencebetween.com/di.../#ixzz1VsGc5nJT

My father created the Moondipper from styrofoam cups back in the late 60's. He also designed a tube finned rocket way before it's time. Too bad we didn't realize how innovative we were back in those days.

You're right!!! I'd forgotten that! Now I'm sorry I didn't give him credit. Somehow I had it in my head that it was an idea that Kenny Moore (may he rest in peace) was toying with. You know I was always very keen on giving credit to people for their designs.

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Lawrence William
SAM #0422

Not to worry LB. It was a reference thing anyway. We had no idea what we were creating could be an influence to the rocket community in those days. It was all about flying weird stuff with rocket motors anyway. I really don't remember my dad's Moondipper being a successful launch anyway. I think it sorta broke up in mid flight. His idea was all about building something light weight that was kinda large. His tube fin rocket was impressive though. 6 toilet paper tubes around a Cmas wrapping paper tube with a modified cone of sorts proved to work quite well.