Running Head: DESIGN PROTECTION IN 1

Design Protection in the Fashion Industry

Reid Rolfes

May 4th, 2018

College Writing R1A

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Piracy has proven to have a negative and positive influence the fashion industry as a

whole. Replicating an article of clothing to profit off an altered version of the design is

completely legal in the US, and well-known designers consider these copycats to be a flattery

towards their work. In the fashion industry, there are individuals who have an original design and

create articles of clothing that form trends within a very large market that influences the US

economy greatly. Many popular designers have tried to pass design protection laws in multiple

court cases. Clothing is a useful accessory like a hammer or a spatula, and failed by reason of

fashion, piracy is difficult to define because it rests on subjective notions of copying (There’s no

line between copying and just imitating).

Because most of the big-box clothing companies copy designers, it makes it almost

impossible for new designers to create a trend worthy clothing line while profiting off of their

own work. For example, Narisco spent years to make a dress and when it was worn in a award

ceremony millions of copies of the pirated version of the dress and he only sold forty-five copies

of his original design. There are plenty examples in the fashion industry where the original

designers hardly profit from their own work at all, in Joanna Paul’s article The “Piracy Paradox”

is So Last Year: Why the Design Piracy Prohibition Act is the New Black. In Paul’s reading he

states, “Narisco was starting his own fashion design firm...While many think, “there ought to be

a law,” fashion designers have no recourse under American intellectual property laws when their

creative work is copied.” If a copycat sees a design that hasn’t been in the fashion market while

watching award ceremonies for example, that individual can take a photo of the design on a

celebrity and have an almost identical design enter the market before the original. Therefore, the

original designer doesn’t profit on his/her design after months or even years of hard work on

their project.
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Design protection laws are difficult to pass because it harms consumers and does not

stimulate the economy. Being that, piracy is very difficult to prove in court because the pirates

alter the original in many different ways to make it look similar but not identical. The Design

Piracy Prohibition Act (DPPA) were bills introduced into the U.S. congress that would have

amended Title 17 of the U.S. code to provide protection to designs for a period of three years.

Without some kind of safety net for original designers copycats will continue to not profit from

their own work. As Sprigman knows and has seen plenty of situations where designers can’t

make profit, “Unrestrained copying robs creators of a way to profit from theirs works- the copier

can always compete better than the originator.” Sprigman is saying that if there were laws to

protect designs then these designers couldn’t be copied anymore. But because there hasn’t been a

successful court case that was ruled in favor having design protection laws, designers need to be

creative with their designs to make it almost impossible to replicate.

Piracy has made difficult for upcoming designers to enter this field on the job market.

New designers from the past have found a sort of loophole, Louis Vuitton and many others have

been doing this for years and that is why their businesses have become a huge success. These

businesses have included their logos within the article of clothing or purse or basically any

accessory. They still are bombarded by a lot of copycats but it is much easier to spot the pirated

version over an original. Because these companies have trademark rights on their brand name

they are allowed to put their logo wherever they want in their design. Changing perspectives,

upcoming designers will do whatever it takes to progress their career further in making a name

brand notice their designs. In lots of cases, well-known designers are trying to sue copycats of

individual no name designers who are profiting off of somelese’s design by just altering it in the
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smallest way or big-box brands like Target and Walmart are profiting enormously at an even

larger scale.

Recently, there has been a legal agreement with the definition between what is legal and

what is illegal in terms of copying clothing in the fashion industry. Because design protection

involves multiple components of legal process to resolve the issue of completely counterfeiting

the design as a whole which is illegal because some copycat is using another popular business’s

logo to profit from being affiliated with the big-box company. Copying a design and altering it

so the finish product is similar but changed enough to be legal in the U.S. economy and these

versions of the original design don’t break the consumers’ bank.

The choice they make, either way, makes the fashion industry ever changing with

different trends and opinions of the consumers. The consumers create trends and fads that

become popular, and copycat individuals want to find out anyway possible to profit as much as

they can from someone else’s work. In the view of the consumer, they will choose an article of

clothing or product of a big-box well-known brand (cheaper) versus a more expensive original

design. The designers do have an enormous involvement in the creation of new fashion because

as consumers we become aware whose style is in and who needs to go back to the drawing board

to let some other designer profit while a new trend is being made behind the scenes.
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References

Paul, J.(2009). the ‘piracy paradox’ is so last year: why the design piracy prohibition act isthe

new black. Chicago-Kent College of Law. Retrieved from

www.kentlaw.iit.edu/academics/jd-program/honors-scholars-program/class-

profiles/2009/joanna-paul.

Sprigman,J.(2006). the piracy paradox: innovation and intellectual property in fashion design.

bCourses. Retrieved from

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401.