Copyrights in fashion business Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Copyrights in fashion business - Research Paper Example This will demonstrate the need for any designer with a fashion accessory to prove to the authorities and the industrial courts that design qualifies for copyright protection. Such proof can only be through a demonstrable non-utilitarian purpose that the accessory serves. The fashion design industry it is common imitations of designs with different trademarks. The owners of the original designs can only file litigation if their trade marks if they find an imitation of their designs. Considering that copyright laws do not protect them, litigation on any of the imitated designs would fail unless the owner proves that indeed theirs had a unique non-utilitarian function to warrant copyright protection. It is hence paramount to explain through this research paper the reason for such unprotection and why there are few attempts to introduce law that can give copyright protection in the fashion industry. Introduction The fashion business is the most challenging for starters who come up with n ew designs. It operates in unfriendly legal environments with scant protection form intellectual property rights. A jaunt in the busy streets of London or New York reveals a culture of business ‘knocking off’ where people rush to imitate any new design as soon as it enters the fashion market. The most humiliating part is that vendors sell their imitations at a price almost half of the price of the original design. It is appalling that there are companies have built huge and legitimate enterprise selling the replicas of other original designs in malls and on the web. All such unfathomable outcomes of intellectual property abuses are not a justification for the introduction of copyright protection for fashion business. The fashion business is a great success in the world and especially the United States and the United Kingdom. Its uniqueness in the scope of offering products with utilitarian value to consumers needs little protection in form of trademarks in the extreme. Though the discussion it would be interesting to note that the fashion and design industry defies all the assumptions of the monopoly theory that establishes the doctrines of intellectual property rights. Thesis statement The fashion industry lacks the legal justification for copyright protection of new designs in the market. Discussion In mid 2011, the southern District of New York the held that color as a trade mark should only b limited to industrial products. It has been general rue that color can be registered as a trademark as long it is non-functional and has a secondary meaning. Color can only be a trade mark if the industrial goods with the color is used as the identifying feature of the specific product. In the case, Christian Louboutin versus Yves St. Laurent had similar allegation of trademark infringement. Christian Louboutin who sold shoes with a red sole alleged that Yves St Laurent had copied the color of its products. The southern district refused to grant a prelimi nary injunction that would have stopped Yves form continuing to sell shoes with a red sole. The court held that color could not be a trademark. After the denial of a preliminary injunction order, the court also granted St, Laurent’s motion for summary judgment on the invalidity of Louboutin’s trademark. The court held that, even if the public associated red soles of the shoes with Louboutin, color is a basic and essential element of fashion design