ready to share: fashion and the commons by johanna blakley
DESCRIPTION
More than any other industry, fashion treats most of its creative output as a commons - shared resources that can be freely reused, recreated and recombined. How does the fashion industry manage to thrive with virtually no copyright protection?TRANSCRIPT
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