How to protect digital patterns from thieves and scammers

Recently a follower messaged me to say that one of my digital (PDF) patterns was being sold in an online shop. I had not given my permission for this – my pattern had been stolen and was being sold illegally for someone else’s profit.

Sadly, I am seeing so many scam shops advertising stolen patterns now and it affects makers across the quilting, sewing, crochet and knitting community.

So today, let’s chat about how this scam works and more importantly what we can do to try and protect our digital patterns from being stolen. Unfortunately, in an online world it’s really difficult to monitor and as a designer it often feels like social media platforms and hosting companies side with the scammers, refusing to take the sites down. But there are things that we can do to help raise awareness and make it more difficult for scammers.

NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you. You can read my full disclosure privacy policy here. Thank you

How Does the Pattern Scam Work?

So, first up, lets’ chat about how this works;

• A person buys lots of patterns that are popular/selling well.
• They then build a webshop and upload all of the patterns for sale, often using the original designers’ listing description and photos.
• Create social media accounts (Instagram/Facebook)
• They will often run ads to encourage customers to their shop to buy patterns.
• They generally offer all the patterns at a discounted price.

It’s completely illegal. Done without the original pattern designers permission and with none of the profit being sent to the original designer.

Once a designer is made aware of this issue (often by kind followers), there follows a lengthy process of reporting the website, social media accounts etc to get them shut down.

And then the whole process starts over again with a different website (often by the same person!).

When I found out about my pattern being illegally sold, the website had already been shut down (having only been set-up 3 weeks ago) and I couldn’t find the IG/Facebook page to report it either.

Customers may often not even realise that there is anything suspicious and just see it as a pattern shop where they can conveniently buy all the patterns they want at a discount, which can lead to further problems if there are any customer service queries as it’s the designers name that is on the pattern.

Frustrating and wrong on so many levels. 

Why is this a problem?

Many pattern designers work for themselves and each design can take many hours and prototypes to get the pattern right, as well as all of the costs involved (material, testers). And with digital patterns, a designer may not recover all of their costs on launch – it can take months..

The branding, images and words used to describe the pattern are all part of the designers Intellectual Property and Copyright, and to have this blatantly stolen and then for someone else to profit from all of the designers’ work is illegal and very disheartening.

Signs that an e-shop is selling stolen patterns

Now, it’s important to know that there are some online retail shops that have an agreement in place with pattern designers to sell their patterns. If you are not sure how to identify a scam shop, here are the most common red flags to look out for;

• Everything is discounted – these sites are set-up with the sole intention of encouraging people to buy something because the scammer wants to make as many sales as possible before they get shut down.
  
• You were directed to the site from a sponsored advert – this is the most common way that footfall is driven to the site, most often through social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram.
  
• There is no consistency across the product images being used – generally these sites use the designers’ images/video, copy and social media posts. So if you start browsing a shop and it looks/feels a bit schizophrenic then check for some of the other red flags.
  
• There is a variety of items for sale – this could be anything from a few designs across lots of different categories (quilting, knitting, crochet) to a random collection of products (sewing patterns, kitchen equipment and clothes). The shop is selling popular items they feel they can make money on quickly rather than curating a thoughtful range of patterns.
  
• No mention of the individual designer – all of the designs are being passed off as the shops’ own.
  
• There are no reviews – there is no guarantee that you will receive the items.
  
• The about page is very limited – there will be no history of the company, values or mission statements.
  
• The homepage/set-up is very basic – these sites are often designed quickly and will have a very basic/confusing structure so they are essentially one big shop with the sole goal of encouraging visitors to buy.

What is clear is that it if someone purchases a pattern, downloads a designers’ images/videos, plagiarises copy and then passes it off as their own and sells it for profit is committing copyright theft.

How Can We Stop Patterns From Being Copied And Sold By Others?

Unfortunately, in a digital world, it is very difficult to prevent this from happening: we can’t vet every single customer before they buy our patterns, and the large retail platforms that we use to sell patterns, are not always able to fully monitor buyers/sellers effectively either.

However, I do believe we can make it more difficult for these fraudulent shops to repurpose our patterns and alongside this we can also help to increase customer awareness of this problem to make it more difficult/less profitable for these shops to operate.

It’s also about making sure that if any pattern does get purchased through this ‘grey’ channel, that it includes information so that a person can discover the real you and potentially go on to be a customer..

Steps We Can Take To Make Patterns Difficult To Sell-On

There are a number of things that we can do to make sure our patterns are branded effectively and not as easy to sell-on….of interest, I haven’t added watermarks to all of my listing photos (and guess which one was used for an ad?!) so I will be rectifying that going forward;

• Ensure that that your pattern includes the following on each page – I like to include this in the footer;
  • ©Your Company Name and year of creation
  • Website/contact details and optionally, social media handles
     
• Include a statement which details the terms of use for your pattern eg. only for individual use, not to be resold or used to make items for sale as is relevant (ideally, this should be detailed in the listing as well so the customer is informed before purchasing).
   
• Include an introduction in the pattern which details a summary of who you are, social media handles, hashtags etc (you can even add hyperlinks to newsletter sign-ups).
  
• Make clear where your patterns are available for purchase: this could be a statement in your social media bio, in the pattern introduction and/or your website. This also gives you the opportunity to say that you are not responsible for any purchases outside of these channels.
   
• Add a watermark/pattern stamp to your patterns: some selling platforms give you the opportunity to add the customers email address/date of purchase to each page (eg. I use Payhip who offer this service – find details here) 
   
• Include a watermark/website details on any photos that you use in your listing
  • This can be website details and/or a brand logo
  • Try to position it somewhere that it can’t be easily cropped out
    
• Review security settings on social media posts – on platforms such as Instagram you can turn off the ability to download reels (which scam sites sometimes reuse for advertising purposes)
   
• If you find a pattern is being sold by someone, share it on social media and ask customers to report/block the account to help it be taken down
   
• You can also report a website for being fraudulent which can help to block the website from loading. Find details here.
  
• Raise customer awareness of this issue – this could be through sharing about the scam, letting them know the ‘official’ channels* that your patterns are available from eg. a stockists statement on your website.
  • *NOTE: there are some official websites that pattern designers sell digital patterns to on a wholesale  agreement.

None of these steps will stop it from happening – the dedicated thief I’m sure would find a work-around – but it will make it harder for them and that has to be as good a start as any?

How To Report Scam Sites

If you are unfortunate enough to have one of your patterns ripped-off by someone who is selling the exact same pattern as their own (eg. images, text etc) then it is possible to report the website to get them taken down for copyright theft.

• Take screenshots of the offending site as evidence for submission
• Whois Domain Finder Lookup – search to find who is hosting the website
• File a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) report with the host site detailing how they are breaking copyright laws. This does require including specific information such as proof of copyright, images of the offending site, website details etc – you can find all the information you need to send here.

I’m hopeful that you will never need to reference this page for copyright theft, but if you do, then I hope that it has been useful.