IP and Business: Intellectual Property in the Fashion Industry

"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different." - Coco Chanel

Versace's medusa motif, the Vera Wang wedding dress, Dr. Martens boots - all these are products of applied intellectual creativity and skill in the fashion industry. No one doubts the tremendous value of intellectual capital to the creation and marketing of products in the fashion industry, be it high fashion or ready-to-wear. Yet many small and medium-sized enterprises pay little attention, if any, to protecting such intellectual assets. In the current business environment, the primary source of competitive advantage for all businesses, including those in the fashion industry, is innovation and original creative expressions. Business managers need to identify such valuable intangible assets in a timely manner, determine their business relevance, and agree on those to be protected and leveraged through the intellectual property (IP) system.

This article looks at the strategic management and use of IP rights to reduce risk, develop business partnerships, and enhance competitiveness of all types of businesses in the fashion industry.

Designs

At the heart of fashion are fresh, new designs. Among the range of IP tools, the protection of industrial designs - also simply referred to as designs - is the most clearly relevant to the fashion industry. Registration of a design helps the owner to prevent all others from exploiting its new or original ornamental or aesthetic aspects, which may relate to a three-dimensional feature, such as the shape of a hat, or a two-dimensional feature, such as a textile print.

The fashion industry invests huge sums to create new and original designs each season. Despite this significant investment, little use is made of relevant national and/or regional design law to register and protect these designs. In some countries, fashion designs may be adequately protected by copyright law as works of applied art. However, a frequently cited explanation for not registering fashion designs is that the short product life cycle - often no more than one six-to-twelve month, season - does not justify the considerable time and financial cost involved.

The arguments for registering a new design have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Registering a design should help to deter others from copying it, and to fight unscrupulous competitors who do so. Moreover, design protection is not always a major financial burden, at least to begin with. Some countries and regions, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), offer an unregistered form of protection for industrial designs for a relatively short period of time. Unregistered design protection, wherever available, is extremely useful for fashion designers or businesses with limited budgets, and for all those that wish to test market new designs before deciding which to register. The unregistered community design right of the EU offers protection for a maximum period of...