Article: Who's Design is it anyway?

Who's design is it anyway?  I have found through this past year very few actual designs, color combination or even storylines are completely original. Take for example my Coffee Cup basket for my hooks. The idea came to me while I was drinking a cup of coffee and racking my brain for a solution to come up with simple problem storage for hooks, sketch pencils on my workbench. 

But, I did not want to necessarily purchase something and could not find the one thing that really made me happy.  I refused to use my much-loved coffee cups because they are for coffee or hot cider not for holding stuff.  I have spent years picking specific cups for just me and my family has slowly added new cups specifically chosen for me. I did not want another glass jar and I am an obsessive-compulsive disorder so I am over the top specific on what I purchase or want anything else just unnerves me.  So, back to the question? 

Who's design is it anyway? I wanted the coffee cup design but I wanted it to stand out on its own and not to traditional. So I sat in my chair and started just with single crochet, I hook and Blue Steel Caron's Home Interior Yarn and created it while watching the shape on my Coffee cup.  So, who is the designer? The Coffee Cup Company? Me? or someone else? Now, my handmade coffee cup does not look exactly like the coffee cup I drink out of. The shape, color, and graphics are nothing similar. 

AIGA explains Copywrite law: 

Copyright is the exclusive right to control reproduction and commercial exploitation of your creative work. Copyright protects any kind of artwork, including illustrations, photographs, and graphic design. Except under certain circumstances (see “work made for hire” below), you own the copyright in your work at the moment you create it in a “fixed” form of “expression.” A fixed form of expression is any tangible medium that can be perceived by humans, including traditional forms—such as paintings, sculptures, writings—and new forms that require a machine to perceive (e.g., GIF files, CDs, websites). 

So What I have gathered anytime we as individual take an idea even from another and we take the effort and time to explain that the original idea was theirs such as inspired by "BB8 Coffee Cup, Ellery Adams, Designer Two Sisters Crochet" we are allowing others to know that yes this is our work but out idea sprung from the heart from another. It allows all of us as designers, artists, and writers to share this world in a more imaginative way and allows us to design our world as we see it in our own way.