Comment 6 for bug 167900

Until the bug gets fixed you can work around the problem by using tiled clones instead of patterns.

You can work around many bugs, usually there is more than one way of achieving things in Inkscape so not many are show stoppers.

Inkscape is being thoroughly refactored for 0.47, maybe after the refactoring things will look different for this bug. Remember that Inkscape is completely voluntary project, you can't push people what the should focus on. Also the situation might not be as simple as you think, maybe this bug depends on other bugs being solved first, sometimes the solution is known but the implementation is scheduled for some time in the future. Not all old bugs get solved, sometimes a new technology comes along and the bugs just disappear cos the old code gets discarded...

Anyway if you are considering buying Illustrator make sure it has the features you need (Illustrator is also not without bugs), although IMO it might be cheaper to hire a developer to solve this bug in Inkscape lol

IMHO your best bet is finding another way of drawing what you want, if you're stuck come to the inkscapeforum.com you'll get lots of help :)