ready to share: fashion and the commons by johanna blakley

Title

Intellectual property in the fashion industry

Trademark protection

Trademark as design

Apparel design is too utilitarian to qualify for copyright

protection

Too utilitarian?

The triumph of the creative commons

An open creative process

Copying & trends

Trendsetters

Trend spotters

The street

Fast fashion

The fashion industry is thriving

• Annual sales in the U.S. fashion industry increased from $130 billion to over $214 in the past decade

• Americans purchase over $13.8 billion worth of clothing ONLINE each year

Why hasn’t copying destroyed the

fashion industry?

The virtues of copying

• Democratization of fashion

• Faster establishment of global trends

• Induced obsolescence

• Acceleration in creative innovation

Innovative knock-offs

“Jelly Kelly”

Miu Miu Knock-off

Effects on the creative process

Making something too difficult to copy

Incentives to not copy

Fashion designers = comedians?

Heterogeneous not homogenous

Self-copying

Fashion’s creative commons

International Comparisons

• Is the fashion industry’s creative commons unique to the U.S.?

Japan

• Japanese Design Law covers apparel, but the novelty standard is extremely high.

European Union

• Community design system: apparel is protected, with a less stringent novelty standard than Japan. But very few designers register their garments or take their cases to court. Why?

How do we establish standards for “novelty?”

In the EU, the novelty standard is too low.

Cuisine

Automobiles

Furniture

Magic Tricks

Hairstyles

Open source software

Computer databases

Tattoos

Comedy

Fireworks

Games

Perfume

In the U.S., fashion isn’t the only thriving low-IP industry

What can commons-based industries teach us?

Between idea and expression

Dueling forces in intellectual property

Suggestions for research

• Identify best practices

• Look at the bottom line

• Foster multidisciplinary research

• Protect low-IP industries from protection

The End