There’s an article in the August MR, which fell into my hot little hands today, which looks very similar to the layout design contest conducted recently in this forum… I don’t think any of the track plans we came up with are duplicated per se, but the concept sure looks familiar.
Maybe we need to start filing our creative efforts for copyright protection before posting here!
Lee
I have to ask, why would you want to copyright a layout plan?
Interesting, I’ll look in to it…
Tjsingle
Folks:
If somebody writes anything he holds the copyright. There’s no filing system like there is for trademarks. It’s just automatic. But it has to be an original idea, and this particular one has been around in various forms for a long time. I think that old Atlas 6 MRR’s book showed how to cut up plywood sheets to make some of their tables.
Now, I suppose the originator of the contest here (Spacemouse?) might have some justifiable irritation that somebody preempted him, if he was planning to write an article. Indeed he deserves credit for using the idea cleverly, even if it’s one we’ve heard a lot. But I don’t think he was planning on it. So here is the situation we have: copyright seems dubious, the idea might have been taken, but it’s hard to claim plagiarism when a concept isn’t quite new. If this article hadn’t come out, lots of people wouldn’t have benefited from the idea.
Can we just look at it this way: if we let the idea out, people can take it, but everybody benefits. If we hoard it, nobody benefits, and somebody can preempt us anyway.
My point exactly.
Folks:
I thought of a comparison just now. This internet thing is often considered a publication. It’s more like a conversation. Lots of stuff is said, and it’s hard to pin down who came out with what first.
I have seen lots of articles in past MRR mags where the author notes that an idea came from a conversation with another MRRer. Joe Kartoffle made the suggestion, Ed Kapusta wrote the article. We hope that Ed made sure Joe didn’t mind him using the idea. I think we would do well to follow this same courtesy.
Of course, we don’t know if this is what happened here, either. MR may very well (very likely, even) have had this article on file for 8 years and brought it out when the similar threads came up on the forum. Using the forum to gauge interest seems to me a very Good Thing To Do on MR’s part.
So you get paid for your efforts when people buy the book you publish them in.
I thought the article was interesting, I never would have come up with any of the ideas.
i haven’t seen the article yet (MR doesn’t show up around here until the 8th to the 12th of the month) but MR has been holding layout design contests for years and publishing the results , i don’t think we (or Spacemouse in particular) can claim to have originated the idea . Spacemouse’s contribution to the process is letting anyone who is interested vote on which is the best layout rather than having the editorial staff decide
ernie
If I am not mistaken, most articles are written and accepted for publication about a year before we see them in MR (or any of the other hobby mags for that matter). Since Spacemouse didn’t even start his Sheet-o-ply contest until March of this year, it is unlikely that MR got the idea from him.
Just my [2c]
-George
Mine arrived on the 27th.
Creative carpentry on a single sheet of plywood isn’t exactly new. I first saw it in MR in the early 1950’s. I’m sure it wasn’t new then - but I don’t have the first 15 years of MR so I don’t really know.
I believe some of the shapes that were developed for Chip’s contest were unique - people thinking farther outside the rectangle.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Oh dear, maybe now MR is going to sue US for stealing their idea!
Seriously I remember back in the late 70’s when MR held a contenst for a room-sized layout in N-scale. I submitted a plan based upon a representation of downtown Fremont, NE. Put quite a lot of work into it as well. In those days there was no such thing a CAD software for the home computer, so my plan had to be drawn out on paper using my high school drafting tools. I didn’t win, didn’t even get an honorable mention. I guess some things never change…
Hmmm …better check it out, curious as to what ideas their contributors came up with.