My wife got an email today to let her know that "patternsforyou.com" had several images of her (Chris's) designs posted in their gallery area, where anyone could create a pattern from the picture.
Upon looking though a significant portion of the "gallery", I found at least twelve of Chris's designs, as well as those of other well known bead artists (Suzanne Cooper and Marjie Deeb for sure), posted on this site. Additionally, a lot of commercial looking clipart was posted.
It seems the way it works is that any image file a user uploads for the pupose of making a pattern is then posted to the "gallery" where any other person then has access to it. As pattern conversions go, the site is pretty poor to begin with, and anyone making a pattern from a picture of finished beadwork would be very disappointed in any case.
I've emailed the site owner demanding that the infringing pictures be removed, but don't have a lot of hope since it's owned and hosted in Czech Republic. (nothing against the Czechs in general, just that resolving legal issues across borders is a tough proposition.)
I hope all will avoid using this website, and will also demand removal of your images if you find any.
Val