Fashion's Moral Dilemma: Exploring How a Lack of Moral Rights in the United States Disproportionately Harms Emerging Fashion Designers

26 Pages Posted: 8 May 2012

Date Written: May 8, 2012

Abstract

The fashion industry shows the highest revenues of all creative industries exceeding those of books, movies, and music combined. However, in the United States, fashion designers are not granted the moral rights necessary to protect their works from being replicated by pirates. The objective of this study is to assess whether legislation such as the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act (IDPPPA) will effectively protect the work of emerging designers from being misappropriated. In addition, this study compares and analyzes the artistic qualities of the creative process of fashion designers and visual artists in order to determine whether designers should be treated as artists whose medium deserves protection. Even though garment designs provide an underlying utilitarian function many fashion designs have crossed into the realm of wearable art. As a result, the primary value of these garments lies in their appearance as opposed to their inherent utility. This analysis draws from a series of interviews with art, fashion and legal professionals as well as close observations of visual artists and fashion designers. Previous works evaluating fashion law have focused on the affect of legislation to well-trademarked luxury brands. This study determined that the best way to protect the intellectual property of emerging designers is not through a passing of widespread legislation, but through the employment of “open source” licenses that contain attribution authorship to the original designer and acknowledge fashion designers as artists with sui generis moral rights.

Keywords: Fashion Design, Art, Copying, Copyright, Innovation, Moral Rights, Inspiration, Wearable Art, Design Protection, Emerging Designers

Suggested Citation

Akanegbu, Anuli, Fashion's Moral Dilemma: Exploring How a Lack of Moral Rights in the United States Disproportionately Harms Emerging Fashion Designers (May 8, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2054783 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2054783

Anuli Akanegbu (Contact Author)

Howard University ( email )

2400 Sixth Street, NW
Washington, DC
United States

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