Fashion Outlaws…and Fashion Panels

If you think art law is the new black, well, you’re wrong. It’s sexy, but not as sexy and black as fashion law.

Last week, Property Outlaws authors, Sonia K. Katyal and Eduardo Moisés Peñalver, wrote a brief but concise critique of intellectual property monopolies and the current attempt by Harvard Law Professor Jeannie Suk and Senator Charles Schumer to provide fashion designs with copyright protection. Katyal and Penalver argue that not only do we see increased litigation, but, similarly to drug patents,

creating intellectual property protection comes at a steep social cost. Providing a limited-time monopoly to innovators allows them to charge monopoly prices. While this is arguably necessary to allow innovators to recoup development costs, it also puts the protected goods out of reach of many consumers[.]

In effect, they argue that “intellectual property protection should be extended only where the gains to society are clear.” Seeing no such benefit, Katyal and Peñalver fear that this newly added protection, which Suk argues on behalf of less well-established designers, would in fact aid only those wealthy and well-known designers which are not in direct need of added market protection. As a last analysis, Katyal and Peñalver conclude that the restriction of copying will only continue to engender the “inevitable,”– disobedience.

One similar aspect of fashion law to art law that I find quite interesting is how this dual and ongoing debate is starting to tease out other discourses previously displaced, mainly those discourses of class, intelligentsia, and labor. Furthermore, what will be more interesting to watch is the playing out of these three discourses within the disciplines of art, fashion, law, and academia. You can read the entire article, The Dangers of Copyrighting Fashion, here.

On a very related note, two Fashion Law panels are coming up in New York City. Refashioning IP Law: The Future of Protection for Fashion Design, tomorrow, April 19th, at NYU, and the other, Discovering the American Balance: IP in Fashion from France to China, on Thursday, April 22nd, at Fordham Law.

Tags: china and fashion, design copying, fashion and design protection, fashion infringement, france and fashion, intellectual property and fashion, piracy and fashion