Protecting Fashion Designs Through Copyright Vs. Design Patents: A Comparative Study Of The US, EU, And India
- IJLLR Journal
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Ganesh Ram K.N., B. Com. LL.B., School of Law, SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu India
Aaditya Narayanan V., B.B.A LL.B., School of Law, SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India
ABSTRACT
The fashion industry is a high-speed world that never seems to sit still in its drive for creativity, novelty and creating endless consumer demand for a new look. Fashions come and go in cycles that operate orders of magnitude faster than the legal institutions intended to protect them. Unlike in, say, pharmaceuticals or technology — fields where products are frequently afforded long lifespans — fashion designs have short lives but echo susceptibility to copying. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of copyright and design law in three key jurisdictions (the United States, European Union [with a focus on Italy] and India) with an admittedly cynical intention of exposing the efficacy of these mechanisms in protecting fashion designs from unauthorized use.
Of these, the EU stands out for its double-sheltering system of registered and unregistered community designs. The system of protection pursues the evanescent nature of fashion, for it provides protections that are instantaneous and temporary and yet permits longer-term monopolies; it is both limber and protective. The United States, by contrast, relies on design patents, a system widely considered ill-fitting to fashion given its expense (each application costs hundreds or thousands of dollars), cumbersome timeline (up to three years) and often little utility in a world where styles can be passé in the space of a season. India is a mix of the two: it has opted for copyright protection for artistic works along with compulsory design registration. Despite its ‘catch all’ appearance, this hybrid model has proved very uncertain and patchy in application.
As a small step in that direction, the following paper asks whether these legal regimes strike the proper balance-encouraging creativity and opening markets while allowing practicable enforcement against pirates-suggesting context-driven answers by examining doctrine, decisional law and facts. A recurrent theme is the balance between providing fast, efficient protection and facilitating longer-term exclusivity. In the United States and India this void is especially apparent, in which inflexible systems have a hard time synchronizing with fashion’s heartbeat. Thus, following the (flexible) model of the EU might enable these legal systems to come closer to a system which affords an answer better tailored to the challenges that are facing today's fashion businesses—one balancing innovation with protection and reasonable competition.
Keywords: Fashion Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright Protection, Design Patents, Community Designs (EU), Comparative Legal Study, Design Protection Mechanisms
