Trashion: An analysis of intellectual property protection for the fashion industry

Intellectual property law strives to provide a climate for invention, ingenuity and imagination to prosper. The standard theory, featured prominently in relevant international and national IP law regimes, is that copyists stifle the incentive for innovation. Yet, in an industry with copying at its heart, firms are prospering contrary to the above standard. This is fashion and, arguably, copying is what it is all about, after all. This paper examines how intellectual property theory works in the fashion industry and explores the idea that copying designs stimulates fashion innovation, thus generating a ‘piracy paradox’. Further, it aims to scrutinise the pertinent theses of induced obsolescence, flocking and differentiation, suggesting an analysis of the interaction between intellectual property rights, economics and competition law.

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