So my question is, if an individual is wanting to tie some flies and sell a few to offset the cost of materials, is there anything governing the use of other peoples patterns? Ie. if you find a pattern on the internet that appears to be invented by someone, can you tie it yourself and sell it? Some that come to mind would be Bully’s Bluegill Spider, STP Frog, GFA Hopper, Double Bunny, etc? These don’t seem to be as generic of a fly as an adams, pheasant tail nymph, etc. Or is it just an ethics question?
It is wrong to sell someone else’s pattern under their name for the pattern. However, if you change anything about the pattern (and who has ever tied a new fly exactly the way the inventor did?) you can legally sell them… But there is still a question of ethics there.
I sell quite a few name branded flies but they are always because something was not available. For example I am doing a bunch of Dolly Llamas right now with a special setup to reduce the tendency of the tail to tangle…
Different fly companies have different ideas about what is right, also. Just look at how many fly companies sell Dolly Llamas, Dali Lamas, and several other iterations of the same name… Only one company really has the right to sell it as a Dolly Llama…
As a side note, Mark Hieronymus ties a really cool tube fly he calls the “Rinpoche” which is nothing like a Dolly Llama, but the name is another honorific for the Dali Lama… I find that sort of thing clever…
If you sell commercially you will have to pay the excise tax to the fed’s. I know two fly shops that took in and sold flies for tyers. To help the tyer out they payed the back taxes owed, which turned out to be several thousand dollars. How they got caught I have no idea.
just tie em and sell them there is no trademarks. might want to get a tax number and pay into the pitman fund so you don’t get into trouble from the feds. feds watch forums and shops…
Flies have no copyright.
However, you must pay excise tax(10%), you must also charge state sales tax and will need a state tax number, and lastly you must claim all monies received as taxable income. If you itemize however you can write off lots!!!
If it’s a commonly available pattern and you take care of the necessary taxes, there’s no problem. Even some recently designed patterns have become available so widely (Copper John, Sparkle Dun) that I don’t see a problem with tying them for a shop or for retail sale (again, assuming you pay the necessary taxes like the rest of us commercial-types do).
On the flipside, if it’s a pattern that ISN’T available widely, I encourage you to tie it in variations that aren’t available from the original designer or at least note in your sales materials that the flies are derived from or originally tied by somebody else. I tie X-Caddis, Caddis Cripples, a variation on Hans’ CDC & Elk, and probably a couple other flies that I got elsewhere, but the color variations are different for all and I note in the descriptions on our shop’s website who designed them and that the original producers have different variations. A shop in Livingston is currently selling a straight-up ripoff of my Purple Haze Cripple (even lifted one of my pics off our site until I complained) and calling it their own, and that’s very annoying compared to the the various blogs, etc. that mention who I am when they put up the pattern.
Thanks for all the pointers. I was thinking of tying up a bunch and putting them on EBay just to see what happens. I certainly don’t plan on making a living at it. I just want to make sure I do everything on the up and up and stay ethical.
Just register per appropriate business and tax laws (legal) and don’t change the name of a fly or put your name on any that you did not actually ‘design’ (ethical).
no body is going to want “used” flys on e-bay for one thing.do the right thing or get a pt job to finance the hobby, i did for years to finance materials, rod/reels/trips.
Forget ebay. People/shops sell super low-end Chinese and Kenyan junk there for $6-8/dz (shops PAY around $11-15/dz for most standard patterns if tied in one of the better offshore locations like Thailand), and there’s no way to compete with that. The only market for USA-tied flies is if you do something new/better/different and sell either wholesale to a shop or direct online.
And the excise tax is on the first sale of any fishing tackle, period. It could be thread on a hook that you already caught 50 fish on and you’d still need to pay the 10%.