Hello everyone
I hope you had a great weekend and managed to get lots of stitching done?
This week I have the unpleasant task of discussing copyright and counterfeit products. This is not something I relish talking about but feel you should be made aware of this as sadly, there are many fake copies of Trish Burr products surfing the globe.
The fact is that all my original products are sold exclusively from my online shop and I do not supply the wholesale trade. If you come across any kits, patterns, or materials branded as Trish Burr from any other source: shop, market, craft fair, or online shop, other than Trish Burr Embroidery they are not originals, they are not mine. If you have purchased any of these products I suggest you return them and ask for a full refund.
There is a shop in New Zealand that is currently selling counterfeit kits – I was made aware of this because several customers who have purchased these kits emailed me to complain because they either found that the printed outline on the fabric disappeared when ironed, or the materials are of inferior quality. It appears they are making copies of my digital patterns and making up their own kits. There are several sellers on AliExpress that sell counterfeits, including a seller from China who sells images of my embroidery on Shutterstock and other stock photo sites. Steps are being taken and legal action will follow should this continue.
Inspirations Magazine
The one exception is Inspirations magazine who produce their own kits for sale along with the project that I have stitched for a particular issue of the magazine. These are for their own exclusive use and this has been a long standing agreement between them and myself.
Workshop Kits
I have an agreement with guilds and shops that they may run workshops on my behalf using my patterns for the workshop only. The agreement is as follows:
- The teacher should be proficient in either Needlepainting or Whitework Embroidery, be familiar with my methods and have enough experience to teach others.
- The teacher should purchase a PDF pattern for each student attending the workshop and will receive a refund of 50% of the total cost. The teacher is responsible for providing a quality printout of each pattern and for making up a full kit for each student.
- The teacher should purchase the fabric and iron on transfers required for the class from my online shop to ensure consistency of quality.
- The teacher acknowledges Trish Burr Embroidery as the source of the pattern.
- The patterns are to be used for the duration of the workshop only and does not give the teacher license to sell surplus kits in their shop/privately.
Book Projects
The same agreement applies to projects that are taught from books – each student should own or purchase a copy of the book.
I am sure you will agree that a lot of time, work and effort goes into creating these patterns and it is really not ok to share, duplicate or make copies of other people’s patterns. To reiterate – All original Trish Burr Embroidery products are sold direct from my online shop. I cannot accept responsibility for purchases made from other sources that do not meet the quality or standard of my products.
On a brighter note, till next time wherever you are in the world, keep smiling and happy stitching!
Trish
I am so sad that this is occurring; there are always those who want to use others work and efforts to make money that wrong way. So sorry; I can only imagine how frustrating this must be, and it is also not fair to those of us who do things the right way. Thank you for keeping on designing your beautiful projects.
Its unfortunate that people feel this is okay. As an artist you work hard to create and we are thankful that there is a medium for you to share this will us….very sad…
You have my support and I would only buy directly from your website!
Thank you Ellen much appreciated. Trish
Trish, I agree with your great customers and only purchase your items from your website. We are so lucky to learn from your creativity and be able to re-create your beautiful designs for our own personal use.
Tout a fait d’accord .Le respect du travail fourni pour le bonheur des brodeuses > Message du 04/11/18 18:01> De : “Trish Burr Embroidery” > A : jeancl.marsollier@orange.fr> Copie à : > Objet : [New post] Counterfeit Kits> >WordPress.com
trishburr posted: “Hello everyone I hope you had a great weekend and managed to get lots of stitching done? This week I have the unpleasant task of discussing copyright and counterfeit products. This is not something I relish talking about but feel you should be made awa”
Merci j’apprécie votre compréhension et cela sera résolu. Trish
it is early morning here and I hope your day will be o.k. – I also regret this practice but find a lot of foto’s of your work on pinterest – I do not know where they come from or if these are pictures of the works realised from your original kits. – it only urges me to get the real thing = if one doesn’t have the proper fabric, threads and pattern it is difficult to get the same results and if these persons go to the trouble of trying to buy the exact materials I think they will find it more costly in the end than if they had bought it from you – so in realityr they are also hurting themselves – hope you will not have to intervene a lot as most people are pretty honest and fair. good luck with all next projects and I look forward to reading about them on your site. – cold greetings from Belgium.
Thanks Monique I am aware of this but it is difficult to track down every offender – I tend to turn a blind eye until it affects my customers. In this case the offender has been contacted and hopefully everyone is now aware of the issue and wont buy from counterfeit sources any longer😊 Trish
I’m really disappointed in this kind of behaviour and I support you all the way. I had to reprimand one of my students for copying one of my patterns to give to a friend. I had to tell them their friends gad to buy a pattern from me. Hope it all works out for you
Thank you Ada I appreciate your support. It has been happening for a long time but I tend to turn a blind eye, however it has gone one step too far so I will have to deal with it this time. Trish
I am so sorry that some people have decided to try to profit from your hard work. I’m very glad that you sent out this warning about your materials being copying and sold. I love your book and lessons on long and short stitches and shading the flowers and birds. I hope the authorities are successful in stopping the counterfeiters.
Thank you Mary rest assured we will resolve this, but it is important that my customers are aware so that it does not happen in future. Trish
Trish, I live in New Zealand and am so disappointed to read this. I thought we were above this. I shop mostly online and would like to know the name of this shop so they don’t get any of my money. Kind regards and I do hope this gets sorted.
Lorraine
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Hi Lorraine I will email you privately. Trish
I am so sorry the world is this corrupt. Your designs are soo beautiful and your gifts and talents are blessed, which makes the corruption even more disheartening.
God bless you as you design and market. Suzanne
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Thank you Suzanne it is just a little dip in the road and will all be smoothed out again😊
Thank you for this email. I have purchased my products directly from you but do know that this sight may be selling your product without consent. I feel I owe it to you go forward this photo I took so you can check it out.
Sent from my iPad
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Thank you Marilyn I appreciate that and we will look into it. Many customers forward us similar sites on a regular basis and most times they remove the content, but I wanted you all to know about it so that in future you will be aware. Trish
This New Zealand shop has done this sort of thing before. I found a Canadian lady’s kits and designs on their site and reported them to her. so sorry it has happened to you. I love your work.
Hello Sue thanks for this information. I will email you privately about this if that’s ok. Trish
Good for you Trish. Hope you are successful in your endeavor. It is NOT ok. Thanks for all your beautiful work and patterns. Chris. Redding CA USA
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Thank you Christine the situation will be resolved and at least my customers will not be subjected to inferior quality kits in future😊
This also happened to Liz Almond of Blackwork Journey.
Lakeside Needlecraft has an excellent set of Rules for this problem: Thought you might like to view them.
Lakeside Needlecraft or the designers they work with hold the copyright to these SAL patterns. By purchasing or downloading patterns for your personal use you agree to follow the usage rules as below. Thank you to our many customers out there who help advise us of people abusing these rules.
If you are caught abusing our copyrights do not expect us to be very happy about it and legal proceedings can occur. Not understanding these rules is not an excuse, if you do not understand please email us.
The main thing you need to know is that electronic patterns can easily be shared and misused over the internet. For every pattern that is passed for free to another person that is a missed sale for the designer. We work many late hours to bring these patterns to you. You would not steal from a shop, do not steal from us.
If you have a pattern you bought at a shop you only have one copy and it is fine for you to give that pattern to someone else, you give it away and you do not have a copy. It is against copyright though for you to photocopy that pattern and give someone a copy and keep a copy for yourself.
With our PDF patterns you are getting electronic PDF files, you cannot pass these files to others and you cannot print a copy for someone else, or print your copy and pass it on as you still have access to the original pattern file, it is the same as photocopying it for someone else. The PDF versions of our patterns are for your personal use only.
The only pattern sharing that should be going on is if you purchase a printed pattern from a shop and you post in a forum to see if anyone is interested in it and the you mail the original pattern to the person and you do not keep a copy for yourself. Even if someone says they printed one of our patterns and then deleted the PDF file this would not be ok as it is easy to download the file again.
Things you cannot do with our cross stitch patterns: – You cannot post our patterns on any forum or website for others to download, whether for profit or not. – You cannot print out or email patterns to others whether for profit or not. – You cannot offer the pdf patterns as a trade or swap to others. If you have purchased a printed pattern that was posted to you from us this would be ok, so long as it is the original pattern. – You cannot save patterns on your hard drive, burn CD’s of the patterns and then offer the CD’s to others whether for profit or not. – You cannot sell our pdf printed patterns. If you have purchased a printed pattern that was posted to you from us or one which was purchased at a shop or one of our retailers, this would be ok, so long as it is the original pattern. – You cannot alter or claim our patterns as your own creations. – You cannot post messages in any forums or on websites offering to pass our pdf patterns, or patterns printed from our pdf files, onto others whether for profit or not. – You cannot mass produce the patterns as stitched items for sale. They are for hand cross stitching only You cannot use our patterns for machine embroidery and mass produce items for sale. If you intend to sell more than 100 completed works using the one pattern you will need to contact me for licencing rights.
What you can do legally with our cross stitch patterns:- – You may photocopy the pattern at a larger size if required, for your personal use only. – You can complete our cross stitch patterns and sell the completed hand stitched item. – You can of course give your completed hand stitched item as gifts for non-profit to anyone. – You can save patterns on your hard drive and burn CD’s of the patterns for your own personal use only, for safe keeping. – You can sell, trade or give away only our printed original patterns to others, so long as you have not kept any copy of this pattern for yourself. This only applies if you have purchased a physically printed pattern that was posted to you from us or one which was purchased at a shop, or one of our online retailers. PDF patterns are for personal use ONLY. You cannot pass these files or prints from these files to others whether for profit or not.
These rules can be changed at any time at the discretion of the Designer should the need arise.
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Thanks Alice this is very informative and a great way to inform customers of copyright issues. I will certainly put a disclaimer on my website. Lakeside Needlecraft have obviously experienced similar problems as I am sure we all have. It is sad that it happens but as long as my customers are aware of where they are buying their kits from that is all that matters. Trish
I am so sorry that your work has been hijacked, Trish. Unfortunately you are not the only artist whose work has been stolen and distributed illegally. I urge Pinterest users to avoid many Russian boards who obviously appropriate copyrighted material. Anyone who reads needlework publications can recognize pages cut from magazines and the designs from prominent needle artists. Do not use these pins. Due to differences in international law, copyrights established outside of Russia and China have no standing inside these countries. Support needle artists by not using hijacked designs on Pinterest.
Thanks Maureen, I am particularly aware of the Chinese and Russians and have had many problems in the past – Pinterest being one of them. As you say the copyrights do not exist in their territories so there is little one can do about it but when I started to get complaints from customers in New Zealand, I thought it was time to take action to protect my reputation and make my customers aware that there are no other distributors out there, so they are better informed in future. Trish
Sendowl kits on behalf of Trish Burr is where I downloaded my floral alphabet book of yours. I thought I purchased it from you. Can you clarify this for me?
Sincerely, Darlene Dubicki darlene_6@me.com
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Hi Darlene no problem at all sendowl are my digital service provider- they enable you to receive your PDF files so quickly so all is well. It is mainly physical kits that are the problem x
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I love your work and support you 100%. So sad that someone would do this when you work so hard to create for us. You have my total support….Hugs
Thank you as always Karen. Trish