Hi everyone I just thought that I’d warn you about this particular website it’s been stealing lots of designers patterns including myself and selling them.
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Can you report the site? Thats horrible!
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No I can’t I looked at it and it’s been happening for 4 years I think
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you will often find sites selling patterns that are not the pattern in the picture. They will use a picture from one site and take a free pattern from another location and put them together. I have run into two of those here in ribblr and suspected a third that got taken down.
It never hurts to google image search your own products from time to time just to make sure.
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Do you have any copyrights on your patterns? You may want to start if you dont. Sadly theft happens alot
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depending on where you are and where they are, you can file copyright infringement on the use of the photo… the pattern is a whole other can of worms, but the photo is cut and dry theft.
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Thank you very much for your reply by the looks of it it’s the actual pattern too though as there was a post on Reddit a few years ago about how the website is stealing the asctual patterns
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I don’t have any copyrights as I didn’t know the cost and time to get them.
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Wait what does that mean?
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copyright law in the US is a very complex system that does not work the way most people think it does. Same with patents. What most people are thinking of is Trademarked, and that is the expensive thing that give you the right to sue for even the hint of copying.
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If you mean copyright it’s normally were nobody can use/copy the idea for example a logo like Nike
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that is trademark, not copyright
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I know it’s hard though because I can’t afford to copyright or trademark every pattern and with copyright it’s still really hard as sometimes I think it goes to court and not many people can afford lawyers.
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Oh sorry I always mix them up 
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That’s not good. You can’t contact the website?
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I think a logo like Nike would fall under trademark law. Some things are protected under both trademark and copyright. Disney probably protects their intellectual property under both. A trademark holder has to aggressively defend their trademark or they lose it
Copyright typically means you can’t use the exact same wording or possibly same exact pictures, it must be entirely your own work to avoid copyright infringement
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It’s the website that allows it there was a post about it a long time ago warning pattern designers.
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you do not pay for copyright, it is bestowed the moment you create it. Your photo is copyright, your pattern is only copyright in the sense that they can not photocopy it . Say there is a bee pattern. Everyone knows what a bee looks like and everyone knows what the stitches are that create that shape. What makes your bee pattern stand out is how you give the instructions and the photo you take to advertise it. Those are copyright, the pattern itself is not…even if you write it at the bottom of the pattern. Mainly because that would be entering a contract after selling the item and not beforehand. But if I see your pattern, and decide there was a better way to do it, and a rewrite it, that becomes my pattern now. That is how you have 15 different brands of the same breakfast cereal, they are all ever so slightly different in some way and do not copy each other’s branding or art
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Watermark everything
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I’ve just seen it and I’ve linked the buyer of the pattern to the person reselling it but I can’t prove it do you have any idea on what I can do
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