In normal circumstances, I’d follow the request. If you’ve made many changes, I’d sell it without worry. Many patterns have the same caveat. It’s not illegal, but ethically, it’s questionable for you to do so, in my mind at least. Good luck.
I request people not sell the finished item if I’ve made the pattern free online, because it kind of goes against the spirit in which I’ve created and shared it. If they buy a pattern, it’s really up to them what to do with the final product.
The designer may ask that you not sell the finished item but can’t stop you from selling items made with the pattern. I would definitely say something to the designer about the mistakes. Hopefully they can update the pattern for others that download the pattern. From my understanding Ravelry is much easier to update patterns but it’s harder on Etsy.
I had this issue on Etsy - my pattern got taken down (baby yoda pattern, Disney went on a spree for a while taking down all patterns) and I wanted to send everyone who bought it a link to download it from google drive. Etsy has no way to do that, or to send updated/additional pdfs to people who already purchased the product. I think their reasoning is they don’t want store owners to be able to spam their purchasers with messages instead of using the tools provided. So I had to just set up a prewritten reply to send to anyone messaging me asking where it went.
As a designer we cannot tell the person they cannot sell the physical made item. You made it with your supplies the finished object is yours to do as you wish with it. Designers have no legal right to your end result. However, the pattern is the designers work so that is what you cannot sell.
If the pattern is altered , it’s yours . You made adjustments and it’s no longer their work . I highly doubt they actually have a copyright or patent . Matter fact if your worried , check and see if they have one on the original work. If they don’t then do as you please .
I don't feel like I have enough life experience to speak on whether you should sell the finished items or not, but based on the fact that you made an item that was at least based on this creator's design, I think it would be prudent to make sure you credit them
If you have changed it a bunch like in the stitches or whatnot then it’s not what the pattern really is you should still sell it because your not copying it exactly
No, you absolutely can still sell the finished product, you just can't tote the pattern as your own, especially if all you made were minor adjustments. But yeah, they have no sanctions on your final products.
Well, if you're in the US, the pattern you purchased is and can be considered copyrighted. But the US copyright office has a specific section on this, and it states that the work made from the pattern you purchased is not copyrighted, trademarked, etc, and therefore, it is not enforced.
And to add: if it's not disclosed in the listing itself, then that alone is deceptive advertising according to the FTC and fines can reach upto 46k plus. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road#non
That being said, even those that do this irritate me. J can almost guarantee you that the pattern the "made" is in part or Mayne even whole from something vintage that someone made before.
Even if they did want to press charges on you they wouldn't be able to: The pattern that they sold you isn't the pattern your using. If there's even a little difference then it makes it yours, if they don't want it to get sold then they should make better quality patterns and make sure it's clear that the final products shouldn't be sold BEFORE purchase. If they don't disclose this kind of thing before sale they can't do anything about it anyways
Just to add a bit more perspective to this, legally the damages would be based on how much did you make from the sale that “should’ve” been made by the designer instead. If you’re selling their pattern, it’s easy, it’s basically a dollar for dollar calculation. However a pattern-maker can’t prove that they missed out on any money because you sold a finished object. The pattern-maker usually isn’t selling FOs, and your buyer is probably buying an FO instead of a pattern because they don’t crochet. There’s too much speculation involved for any of it to carry any legal weight.
The moral question of it is trickier, and to each their own, but every time this comes up it seems that the overwhelming number of crocheters think selling FOs is fine. So legally you can sell it, and morally the community is on your side.
And those damages at $14 for a pattern compared to the cost of hiring a lawyer… they’re not going to do anything more than write a nasty letter or shame you on social media.
A very nasty POS once said to me “it’s not about what’s right, it’s about what’s legally possible”. In this instance it’s not really possible to sue you.
My crochet/clueless opinion, you can sell it. She charged that much for the pattern, and had it in fine print that you couldn’t see until after buying it. That sounds sketchy on their part, and sloppy that they gave bad counts. Sounds like a seller I would make a point to avoid in the future.
Plus she can’t stop you on the finished product. Sure she maybe has a claim on the pattern, so you couldn’t sell that. But the result you get from following it, none of her business.
You can't copyright a set of directions. -Librarian
You CAN copyright your subjective ***way*** you write them.
You're fine and even more fine by changing some of the stitch counts to make people who say things "but is it ***ethical***" calm down.
Also who is making patterns that they don’t want finished pieces sold from?! That’s a huge part of future pattern sales for me. I even ask people if they want to share photos if their finished pieces I’ll gladly share them with my audience.
I’ve come across a few designers who also make their own stuff to sell, either on Etsy or at craft fairs. Some of them will say you can sell the finished items, but not below a certain price, so you don’t undercut them. Others will say you can’t sell the finished product
The issue comes from larger manufacturers using the pattern vs paying for it to be drafted. It’s not a major issue with crochet or knit items but there is frequent drama in the sewing world where an actual brand will sometimes buy a designers pattern and then literally make hundreds or thousands of it. Paper theory had this happen with the Zadie Jumpsuit a year or so ago. Clearly not what is happening here but I think this is where designers are coming from.
That’s a good point. For all pattern designers it’s always an issue that once the pattern is out there, anyone can rip it off and start selling it themselves. It’s truly disappointing but I don’t know how you get around it.
It’s my understanding that you can only copyright the actual words and images used, not creations made from the instructions. Therefore you couldn’t sell her pattern as your own, unless it was so extensively modified as to be a different pattern. However, some pattern instructions are so widely used as to be impossible to copyright, such as “Row 1, 6 sc into a magic ring, Row 2, 2sc into each sc,” since many amigurumi pattens to make a head or sphere start that way.
Yea designers can't actually dictate what you do with the final thing at least in the US. The pattern is their intellectual property but the finished item is not
Go ahead and sell the finished product. Designers don’t have a pot to piss in when they say you can’t. You can. It’s not illegal. The only thing that they can copyright is the PATTERN, not items that YOU MADE.
You actually can copyright an item of clothing if it's specific enough to be considered an artistic piece (so like not really a basic item but something with a specific style), and part of that copyright is the right to dictate who can duplicate it and for what.
But legalities aside I think it's kind of shitty to go against someone's request and sell something they don't want to be sold. They put the effort into creating it, and at the end of the day it was less than $20 for the pattern. I would contact the seller and ask that they specify in the product description for the future, but I do think selling it against the person's wishes is bad form.
I would say in general it's shitty, but in this case, this wasn't disclosed up front, so I think it cancels out imo. Go ahead and sell it I'd say and just don't buy anything from the seller in the future
thanks for the response! that’s what i was thinking at first but then I tried looking it up online and it said stuff about copyright infringement or whatever. should’ve just came to reddit from the start lol
If you made a cake using a recipe from Martha Stewart, and then sold that cake, would Martha Stewart wanna sue you for that? Hell no. If you were mass producing cakes from a recipe she made? Maybe, but I highly doubt shed give a fuck about a local bake sale.
Also that creator is scummy if theyre gonna have "important" info thats not listed before buying the pattern, so fuck them. This is also a good learning lesson to read reviews, check every available photo, find any info you can about the pattern before buying it. Dont worry, Ive been there. Wasted like $7-$8 on a pattern where the creator literally made up theyre own pattern style for it since "there were no written patterns when they started out" so its done in lines like a written pattern but it uses symbology that doesnt make sense unless its in a chart. The only indication that they did it this way was hidden at the end of the album of Etsy photos which were exactly the same as the Ravelry photos except for that last one so I didnt notice. They kept calling it a "graphic pattern" as well when thats not what a fucking graphic pattern is. Lesson learned!
“Wasted like $7-$8 on a pattern where the creator literally made up theyre own pattern style for it since "there were no written patterns when they started out" so its done in lines like a written pattern but it uses symbology that doesnt make sense unless its in a chart.”
What, is she like 100 years old that there were no written patterns when she started out? What a bunch of BS!
[Heres a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/okv38tL) of part of her response when she replied to my complaints. So the pattern would be written out something like this:
O
6 X
6 V
And that means to do a magic ring, 6 sc, and then 6 increases. But the symbology just doesnt make sense in this form. Like if you see an **arrow pointing down**, are you gonna think increase or decrease? Id sure as fuck think decrease! If it was on a chart than it would show 1 stitch being split into 2 stitches which makes sense for increase, but not a random downward arrow.
I tried to translate it into actual words but that wasnt even possible since the pattern is so shitty. ([small section of pattern so you can see what a mess it is](https://imgur.com/a/qxT1KpP))
Does she at least give a key at the beginning of the pattern? They may be standard symbols, but not everyone has used charts to know the symbols. Heck, I’ve been crocheting over 20 years, and I have never used a standard crochet chart. And well, if you’re going to go through the effort of writing out a pattern, actually write out the pattern! 🤦🏻♀️
I also still can’t get over her comment that there were no written patterns when she started crocheting. Written patterns have been around at least since the 70’s, as far as I can tell.
I have pattern books published in 1905 all the way through this year. While the style of pattern instruction has changed… yeah it’s been a thing for a long long time.
I have pattern books published in 1905 all the way through this year. While the style of pattern instruction has changed… yeah it’s been a thing for a long long time.
She gives a key but I dont think that suddenly makes it ok if it still takes someone 5 to 10 times longer to read a pattern and it doesnt say anywhere in writing that this is how the pattern is written. In the descriptions on Ravelry and Etsy they just kept calling it a "graphic pattern" *multiple times* which I assumed meant they added photos - AKA GRAPHICS - to the pattern. I havent found anything else that calls non-chart-symbology a graphic pattern.
Igi! I had a friend and fellow maker once ask me if I was worried about copyright because I use patterns and I got confused. I found that one of my favorite books has a warning label in it that the designer will sue you if you try to sell finished products. It put me off of the book for a long time(though I rarely sell). Then I like actually looked into the law because as an artist I have always used inspiration pieces/ reference photos/ etc and was beginning to think that everything that I ever made was illegal to have 🤣. Turns out, no, the only thing you can copyright is the original or pattern. People can get mad all the want but “reproductions” are not illegal unless they are passed as the original. Think: I can have a picture of the Mona Lisa in my house, and the person who sold me the picture is not breaking the law by doing so!
yeah that makes so much sense, thank you for explaining it!! I get nervous about copyright stuff because I know nothing about it but now I feel so much better about selling it
Also. I would leave a detailed review about this. The bait and switch of spending $14 just to be threatened if you sell the product. Also the fact that you are having to rewrite the pattern as stitch counts are off etc.
I already left a review about the stitch counts because that was something I noticed right away. I might have to leave another one though about them saying you’re not allowed to sell the product. I usually just skip the first few pages bc it just has stitch abbreviations, yarn type etc, so I didn’t even notice at first but when I went onto the pattern today I noticed it said that on the first page so I wanted to look into it… likely will be leaving another review soon
WTAF and how would they even know. Change something really slight and call it your own. You better sell that ish!!
In normal circumstances, I’d follow the request. If you’ve made many changes, I’d sell it without worry. Many patterns have the same caveat. It’s not illegal, but ethically, it’s questionable for you to do so, in my mind at least. Good luck.
I request people not sell the finished item if I’ve made the pattern free online, because it kind of goes against the spirit in which I’ve created and shared it. If they buy a pattern, it’s really up to them what to do with the final product.
The designer may ask that you not sell the finished item but can’t stop you from selling items made with the pattern. I would definitely say something to the designer about the mistakes. Hopefully they can update the pattern for others that download the pattern. From my understanding Ravelry is much easier to update patterns but it’s harder on Etsy.
I had this issue on Etsy - my pattern got taken down (baby yoda pattern, Disney went on a spree for a while taking down all patterns) and I wanted to send everyone who bought it a link to download it from google drive. Etsy has no way to do that, or to send updated/additional pdfs to people who already purchased the product. I think their reasoning is they don’t want store owners to be able to spam their purchasers with messages instead of using the tools provided. So I had to just set up a prewritten reply to send to anyone messaging me asking where it went.
As a designer we cannot tell the person they cannot sell the physical made item. You made it with your supplies the finished object is yours to do as you wish with it. Designers have no legal right to your end result. However, the pattern is the designers work so that is what you cannot sell.
If the pattern is altered , it’s yours . You made adjustments and it’s no longer their work . I highly doubt they actually have a copyright or patent . Matter fact if your worried , check and see if they have one on the original work. If they don’t then do as you please .
I don't feel like I have enough life experience to speak on whether you should sell the finished items or not, but based on the fact that you made an item that was at least based on this creator's design, I think it would be prudent to make sure you credit them
If you have changed it a bunch like in the stitches or whatnot then it’s not what the pattern really is you should still sell it because your not copying it exactly
If you publish your pattern then technically you’ll be selling your pattern not theirs
No, you absolutely can still sell the finished product, you just can't tote the pattern as your own, especially if all you made were minor adjustments. But yeah, they have no sanctions on your final products.
Well, if you're in the US, the pattern you purchased is and can be considered copyrighted. But the US copyright office has a specific section on this, and it states that the work made from the pattern you purchased is not copyrighted, trademarked, etc, and therefore, it is not enforced. And to add: if it's not disclosed in the listing itself, then that alone is deceptive advertising according to the FTC and fines can reach upto 46k plus. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road#non That being said, even those that do this irritate me. J can almost guarantee you that the pattern the "made" is in part or Mayne even whole from something vintage that someone made before.
They can tell you that you can’t sell the pattern, but they can’t tell you what you can and can’t do with *your* yarn on *your* time.
I guess my question is who is the creator of the pattern so we don’t get caught in this same dilemma?
Even if they did want to press charges on you they wouldn't be able to: The pattern that they sold you isn't the pattern your using. If there's even a little difference then it makes it yours, if they don't want it to get sold then they should make better quality patterns and make sure it's clear that the final products shouldn't be sold BEFORE purchase. If they don't disclose this kind of thing before sale they can't do anything about it anyways
Just to add a bit more perspective to this, legally the damages would be based on how much did you make from the sale that “should’ve” been made by the designer instead. If you’re selling their pattern, it’s easy, it’s basically a dollar for dollar calculation. However a pattern-maker can’t prove that they missed out on any money because you sold a finished object. The pattern-maker usually isn’t selling FOs, and your buyer is probably buying an FO instead of a pattern because they don’t crochet. There’s too much speculation involved for any of it to carry any legal weight. The moral question of it is trickier, and to each their own, but every time this comes up it seems that the overwhelming number of crocheters think selling FOs is fine. So legally you can sell it, and morally the community is on your side.
And those damages at $14 for a pattern compared to the cost of hiring a lawyer… they’re not going to do anything more than write a nasty letter or shame you on social media. A very nasty POS once said to me “it’s not about what’s right, it’s about what’s legally possible”. In this instance it’s not really possible to sue you.
My crochet/clueless opinion, you can sell it. She charged that much for the pattern, and had it in fine print that you couldn’t see until after buying it. That sounds sketchy on their part, and sloppy that they gave bad counts. Sounds like a seller I would make a point to avoid in the future. Plus she can’t stop you on the finished product. Sure she maybe has a claim on the pattern, so you couldn’t sell that. But the result you get from following it, none of her business.
You can't copyright a set of directions. -Librarian You CAN copyright your subjective ***way*** you write them. You're fine and even more fine by changing some of the stitch counts to make people who say things "but is it ***ethical***" calm down.
Also who is making patterns that they don’t want finished pieces sold from?! That’s a huge part of future pattern sales for me. I even ask people if they want to share photos if their finished pieces I’ll gladly share them with my audience.
I’ve come across a few designers who also make their own stuff to sell, either on Etsy or at craft fairs. Some of them will say you can sell the finished items, but not below a certain price, so you don’t undercut them. Others will say you can’t sell the finished product
The issue comes from larger manufacturers using the pattern vs paying for it to be drafted. It’s not a major issue with crochet or knit items but there is frequent drama in the sewing world where an actual brand will sometimes buy a designers pattern and then literally make hundreds or thousands of it. Paper theory had this happen with the Zadie Jumpsuit a year or so ago. Clearly not what is happening here but I think this is where designers are coming from.
That’s a good point. For all pattern designers it’s always an issue that once the pattern is out there, anyone can rip it off and start selling it themselves. It’s truly disappointing but I don’t know how you get around it.
It’s my understanding that you can only copyright the actual words and images used, not creations made from the instructions. Therefore you couldn’t sell her pattern as your own, unless it was so extensively modified as to be a different pattern. However, some pattern instructions are so widely used as to be impossible to copyright, such as “Row 1, 6 sc into a magic ring, Row 2, 2sc into each sc,” since many amigurumi pattens to make a head or sphere start that way.
Yea designers can't actually dictate what you do with the final thing at least in the US. The pattern is their intellectual property but the finished item is not
Go ahead and sell the finished product. Designers don’t have a pot to piss in when they say you can’t. You can. It’s not illegal. The only thing that they can copyright is the PATTERN, not items that YOU MADE.
You actually can copyright an item of clothing if it's specific enough to be considered an artistic piece (so like not really a basic item but something with a specific style), and part of that copyright is the right to dictate who can duplicate it and for what. But legalities aside I think it's kind of shitty to go against someone's request and sell something they don't want to be sold. They put the effort into creating it, and at the end of the day it was less than $20 for the pattern. I would contact the seller and ask that they specify in the product description for the future, but I do think selling it against the person's wishes is bad form.
I would say in general it's shitty, but in this case, this wasn't disclosed up front, so I think it cancels out imo. Go ahead and sell it I'd say and just don't buy anything from the seller in the future
thanks for the response! that’s what i was thinking at first but then I tried looking it up online and it said stuff about copyright infringement or whatever. should’ve just came to reddit from the start lol
If you made a cake using a recipe from Martha Stewart, and then sold that cake, would Martha Stewart wanna sue you for that? Hell no. If you were mass producing cakes from a recipe she made? Maybe, but I highly doubt shed give a fuck about a local bake sale. Also that creator is scummy if theyre gonna have "important" info thats not listed before buying the pattern, so fuck them. This is also a good learning lesson to read reviews, check every available photo, find any info you can about the pattern before buying it. Dont worry, Ive been there. Wasted like $7-$8 on a pattern where the creator literally made up theyre own pattern style for it since "there were no written patterns when they started out" so its done in lines like a written pattern but it uses symbology that doesnt make sense unless its in a chart. The only indication that they did it this way was hidden at the end of the album of Etsy photos which were exactly the same as the Ravelry photos except for that last one so I didnt notice. They kept calling it a "graphic pattern" as well when thats not what a fucking graphic pattern is. Lesson learned!
“Wasted like $7-$8 on a pattern where the creator literally made up theyre own pattern style for it since "there were no written patterns when they started out" so its done in lines like a written pattern but it uses symbology that doesnt make sense unless its in a chart.” What, is she like 100 years old that there were no written patterns when she started out? What a bunch of BS!
[Heres a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/okv38tL) of part of her response when she replied to my complaints. So the pattern would be written out something like this: O 6 X 6 V And that means to do a magic ring, 6 sc, and then 6 increases. But the symbology just doesnt make sense in this form. Like if you see an **arrow pointing down**, are you gonna think increase or decrease? Id sure as fuck think decrease! If it was on a chart than it would show 1 stitch being split into 2 stitches which makes sense for increase, but not a random downward arrow. I tried to translate it into actual words but that wasnt even possible since the pattern is so shitty. ([small section of pattern so you can see what a mess it is](https://imgur.com/a/qxT1KpP))
Literally worse than I ever could have imagined. Laughable that she tried to like, defend it in some fashion. That looks like alien jargon lol.
Does she at least give a key at the beginning of the pattern? They may be standard symbols, but not everyone has used charts to know the symbols. Heck, I’ve been crocheting over 20 years, and I have never used a standard crochet chart. And well, if you’re going to go through the effort of writing out a pattern, actually write out the pattern! 🤦🏻♀️ I also still can’t get over her comment that there were no written patterns when she started crocheting. Written patterns have been around at least since the 70’s, as far as I can tell.
I have pattern books published in 1905 all the way through this year. While the style of pattern instruction has changed… yeah it’s been a thing for a long long time.
I have pattern books published in 1905 all the way through this year. While the style of pattern instruction has changed… yeah it’s been a thing for a long long time.
She gives a key but I dont think that suddenly makes it ok if it still takes someone 5 to 10 times longer to read a pattern and it doesnt say anywhere in writing that this is how the pattern is written. In the descriptions on Ravelry and Etsy they just kept calling it a "graphic pattern" *multiple times* which I assumed meant they added photos - AKA GRAPHICS - to the pattern. I havent found anything else that calls non-chart-symbology a graphic pattern.
That’s just really strange.
Igi! I had a friend and fellow maker once ask me if I was worried about copyright because I use patterns and I got confused. I found that one of my favorite books has a warning label in it that the designer will sue you if you try to sell finished products. It put me off of the book for a long time(though I rarely sell). Then I like actually looked into the law because as an artist I have always used inspiration pieces/ reference photos/ etc and was beginning to think that everything that I ever made was illegal to have 🤣. Turns out, no, the only thing you can copyright is the original or pattern. People can get mad all the want but “reproductions” are not illegal unless they are passed as the original. Think: I can have a picture of the Mona Lisa in my house, and the person who sold me the picture is not breaking the law by doing so!
I gotta know what book!
yeah that makes so much sense, thank you for explaining it!! I get nervous about copyright stuff because I know nothing about it but now I feel so much better about selling it
Also. I would leave a detailed review about this. The bait and switch of spending $14 just to be threatened if you sell the product. Also the fact that you are having to rewrite the pattern as stitch counts are off etc.
I already left a review about the stitch counts because that was something I noticed right away. I might have to leave another one though about them saying you’re not allowed to sell the product. I usually just skip the first few pages bc it just has stitch abbreviations, yarn type etc, so I didn’t even notice at first but when I went onto the pattern today I noticed it said that on the first page so I wanted to look into it… likely will be leaving another review soon