There was a poster on here the evening that Partners in Crime aired that had made some kitted Adipose and was selling them on Ebay.

ah! which God would be worshipped though?

The lonely one?

not sure Opus Dei are ready to canonise RTD.

That's okay, I don't think canon really interests him.

lmao...

Which is where your argument fails completely, I'm afraid

That ood was naked

Could she not have put a disclaimer on the pattern saying that 'this is not authorised/endorsed by or otherwise connected to the BBC'? She's not actually selling the finished item. I've got a black scarf with the word 'TAXI' in yellow lettering similar to the one that Christine used to hold out to hail a cab in Cagney And Lacey,it was knitted for me by a friend from her own pattern,I don't know but I bet she never thought to seek permission to produce it.

I want my grandma to knit me some doctor who things now
To put on my doctor who shelf :|

The 'Tracey Island' one is quite effective, though.

So what if you painted a picture of Tennant dressed as he does in Doctor Who and sold the picture. Is that breaching copyright?

Well, no it isn't. The BBC, or any other station doing the same thing, would have had to have had clearance from the toy manufacturer and the Anderson estate, if they hadn't have had that they would have been sued for millions. In fact the finished Blue Peter model will have been inspected by and had to have been approved by the toy manufacturer and the Anderson estate. To even show the product on Blue Peter will have needed clearance. It is as simple as that, there are no ifs or buts in order for a badly thought out Internet forum criticism, THAT is what would have happened, the BBC would have had clearance.

The BBC were not selling the copyrighted item for a profit either.

Now I dare say that if Ebay had been around at the time (or in its capacity now) and other people started selling the exact 'pattern' as seen on Blue Peter, and they hadn't have had clearance in the first place, then it would have been a different story, and I dare say that if ebay had been around at the time the BBC probably wouldn't have got the clearance in the first place.

As it is, well this whole thing is a non story with typical and predicable forum knee-jerk reactions.

Neither is the knitting pattern woman. No-one is saying the ebayers that are shouldn't bet stopped, but that's not the point.

That's a lot of supposition - none of which I'm afraid I agree with.

Ah ...now, I really can't agree there. I have friends who don't watch or like the show who have blogged about the BBC's behaviour on this story. Hell, my 60 something year old parents even mentioned it in conversation. The forum seems (by my unscientific reckoning) to contain more people that condone the BBC's moronic actions than out there in the real world. It's not a big deal to anyone (not even in this weird microcosm), but the consensus seems to be "what a bunch of dicks". It's not a big deal to anyone, but is interesting enough to get people chatting both in here, and out there in the sane world.

I tried to flog some police box signs on Ebay and at the same time my partner was selling a painting of David Tennent (part of his Modern Icons range) also on Ebay.

They were both up for a few days and were gathering interest.

Then we recieved a rather strongly worded email from Ebay saying BBC Worldwide (or something) had complained about copyright issues and the items had been deleted.

I can't quite remember the exact text, but I am sure there was some threat included that if we re-offended our Ebay account might be closed down too.

This was a couple of years ago, so this really isn't new.

Meh I don't see the harm in it personally, esp if these knitters are not making hundreds of thousands, lol

They are obviously in demand, maybe the bbc should pay the knitters to do a line on behalf of them?

Petty quibbling isn't it really, I mean in reality kids would prefer the figures to a handknitted version. It's the adults who can appreciate the handmade, hehe!

The BBC make enough money out of merchandise, this is hardly going to eat into the profits....silly company.

I saw the interview kevinmerchant mentioned previously. It was on the E24 segment of the BBC News Channel. While I'm well aware of the PR damage limitation role he obviously had to play, the licensing guy did seem quite genuinely sorry about the the way Mazzmatazz had been approached by the lawyers. He was full of praise for the creativity of Doctor Who fans, and in this case he wanted to talk to Mazzmatazz about working out a deal so that both she and BBC Worldwide could get a financial benefit.

I am not a lawyer but...

The spokesman in the news article I quoted earlier said "If you don't protect your trademark, it's taken away from you."

So in principle, if the BBC didn't take steps to act against people making a few quid out of these toys they could lose control of the whole Who merchandise industry. It would be a free for all, and the potential losses could add up to millions.

Meh copyright, lol a few knitted toys, are not the same as 'high quality' action figures.

They would still have the right to call the officiall licenced toys 'genuine' etc. even if there was a free for all. Leave it to the consumer to decide

Wonder what the BBC do with all these millions anyway? I can't see LOL!

At a wild guess, I'd say you're not a lawyer either!

It goes towards to the costs of making their output. (Sadly it all goes into one non-specific pot otherwise DW would have a much larger budget.)

And while it's natural to gravitate towards the 'little person' in cases like these, it would be nice if people took a couple of minutes to read up on the law to actualy understand why the BBC is obliged to persue people infringing on their Copyrights.

No they wouldn't, and thats the whole point of this. If the BBC don't actively protect their IP (intellectual property), then they lose all rights to it.

Therefore, if they don't try to stop people from making & selling their own Ood and Adipose figures (knitted or otherwise), they would lose their rights to the Adipose and Ood designs, and would no longer be able to use them in Doctor Who, or make merchanidise featuring them.

When you look at it like that, what they have done is perfectly understandable.

Intellectual propery should be made accessible to all

Personally I dont agree with companies owning intellectual property anyway.

It gets taken too far, look at Ms Rowling and her petty quibbles.

Seeing as the beeb make all this money, I think I will stop paying my licence, well look at all the recent redundancies...shocking.

What a great idea! Then there'd be no incentive for anyone to ever create anything.

Commie.

Rowling could lose that case, despite the book containing 90% odd of her words. It's all about the interpretation of fair use laws.

The Beeb isn't legally allowed to make a red cent in profit. This is BBC Worldwide. Which is not the same thing.

Apparently.