I just bought some plans on ebay.
It got me to thinking about doing something like selling plans myself.
The ones I bought are for a special type of john boat.
Printed years ago (read 50s) I assume they are from a book of plans as opposed to stand alone plans.
So if I find an interesting set of plans in …say… an old mechanics illustrated can I cut them out and sell just the plans?
Do I need to give credits if I don’t copy anything and sell just the pages containing the plans?
As long as you’re not passing off copies and describe the item accurately, I don’t think you’d have any problems.
I have cut up old car magazines that had pictures, descriptions and performance date of cars from the 50’s and 60’s and sold that info alone on Ebay with no problem. A 1960’s Motor Trend will have stories on 3 or 4 new cars, the magazine itself is worth $10, I can fetch $10 to $15 for each individual article.
I think the OP wants to sell copies, and sounds like the received copies.
He’ll want to check the copyright dates to make sure that the plans are now public domain. Of course it’s possible that the plans are public domain anyway, and all the copyright pertains to is the reproduction in the magazine. That means that you can probably just redraw the plans in AutoCAD or Catia or Unigraphics (I use PowerPoint for that kind of stuff myself) and sell them.
I thought that copies were definately out.
What I was/am considering is cutting out the articles and selling the loose pages as an article.
Sounds like a definate “Probably OK”.
thanks